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PRESENTED BY 



EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE 



THE 

EDUCATIONAL BEARINGS OF 

MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

BY 

CHRISTABEL M. MEREDITH 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 






Fubiishs? 



CONTENTS 

Editor's Introduction "5 

I. The Nature of Instinct 9 

II. The Modification of Instinct: Purposive 

Action . 28 

III. The Modification of Instinct: Mental Growth 46 

IV. The Growth of Habits and Sentiments . . . 63 
V. Environment and Suggestion 78 

VI. Experiment in Education 95 

Vn. Special Studies in Connection with Memory .hi 
VLII. Special Studies in Connection with Adolescence 126 
Outline 139 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

The reform of the teaching process is a somewhat difl5ciilt 
matter. All who are specially charged with the improvement 
of classroom practice will testify to the fact. The difficulty is 
excessive at the present hour because we have arrived at a point 
where tinkering with the various details of traditional procedure 
no longer gives a considerable result. Educational reconstruc- 
tion must be made far reaching if it is really to become effective 
in a fundamental way. It must greatly extend the range of 
experiences which the school makes personal to the child and 
provide a more vital foundation for the acquisition of such 
skills as ate eminently necessary in adult life. The modem 
program calls for greater vitality and breadth in the education 
of youth. Success in such an expansion of educational poHcy 
involves a radical change in point of view. 

The needed change in point of view will come more readily if 
the teacher recognizes the restricted field in which dominant 
teaching traditions have originated. In function the first 
schools were exceedingly narrow as compared with modem in- 
stitutions. There is no human necessity for which the present 
educational system does not aspire to train young men and 
women. Its scope is as broad as human life; its field has the width 
of human nature. The earhest schools, those which set the first 
teaching traditions, were reading and writing schools. They 
taught only the formal arts associated with the printed or writ- 
ten symbol. The provision of broad and vitalizing first-hand ex- 
periences was no part of their task. Nor did they teach through 
an oral exchange of adventures, save in the most incidental way. 
The ordinary social contacts of the children were supposed to 
give these. The school aimed to do the few things which ordi- 
nary human contacts could not do; it read a meaning into a sign 



6 EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

or gave form to the idea which the person desired to communi- 
cate across time or distance. Its central task was to make Uter- 
ates out of young illiterates. The subjects with which it was 
concerned were chiefly formal. Its methods were memoriter. 
From such narrow traditional sanctions the modem educator 
has been trying to develop an effective school system. His as- 
piration has been greatly interfered with. He requires a con- 
scious and thoroughgoing philosophy as a substitute for inade- 
quate and unrationalized traditional sanctions. 

It is not enough for the teacher to escape the narrowness of 
craft tradition. In the teaching of youth, the adult must escape 
himself. Our whole tendency in dealing with human nature is 
to read ourselves into others. Grown people in the contacts of 
society or commerce will correct each other's misconceptions for 
the time being, but it is really surprising how persistently people 
go through the world thinking that people are substantially like 
themselves. When adults deal with children, the error of such 
expectations is shown up less clearly. In the presence of adult 
folks, little boys and girls do not show all that there is of them- 
selves. Often they conceal themselves under an obedience which 
gives the required overt act, but in which there is no heart and 
soul. Thus, the adult's misconceptions as to childhood and youth 
do not receive even the ordinary corrections which characterize 
adult relations. The teacher needs to remember always that 
there is a large gap between people. To this truth must be added 
another, that the gap between adults and children increases 
the younger children are. With these two safeguarding con- 
ceptions, a sympathetic mind will go far toward making daily 
contacts with youth render greater wisdom. But the final appeal 
must be made to scientific methods. The science of psychology 
must be made to render service in the interpretation and con- 
trol of human nature. 

Every teacher should be something of a psychologist. It is 
his knowledge of human nature which gives precision to his 
theory of human control and brings accuracy to his technique 
of education. The analytic cast of mind should not, of course, 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 7 

crowd out the sympathetic and artful attitude which is always 
dominant with great teachers, but it is a capacity which every 
teacher should have for use on preparatory and critical occa- 
sions, when theoretic considerations are important in arranging 
for levels of action more effective than have been known before. 
It is important then that whatever we know of human nature 
in scientific terms be made available for the teacher. The facts 
which have a special pertinency for the teacher should be col- 
lected and arranged so as to indicate their intimate bearings on 
teaching sldlL Such an application of psychology is here offered 
to those who instruct youth. The compass of the work is small, 
but a fine discrimination in choice and organization has made 
brevity a virtue unaccompanied by its usual shortcomings. 



PREFACE 

The aim of this book is to give a brief account of some 
portions of recent psychological work which have had 
and are likely to have a special influence on education. 
Part I is concerned mainly with genetic psychology : 
instincts, the growth of habit, and the effect of environ- 
ment and suggestion. In selecting these topics for dis- 
cussion it is not of course claimed that the views involved 
are wholly modern, some of them have formed the basis 
of educational theory for several generations. Much of 
the permanent value, for example, of Froebel's work is 
due to his recognition of certain innate impulses in 
children of which the teacher must make use, and some 
of Rousseau's statements concerning child nature and 
the influence of environment might well have been 
written to-day. What is intended is rather to summarise 
the theories as they now stand and to show their bearing 
on what is being and can be done in education. The 
topics selected have been chosen because of their funda- 
mental importance in this connection. 

5 



6 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

Part II is concerned with some special studies in 
educational psychology and in particular with experi- 
mental work. Here it has been thought better to pick 
out certain points for discussion as illustrative of the 
work that is being done rather than to attempt any- 
general summary of results. 

Some portions of the substance of Chapters I, II, and 
III have already appeared in seven articles published in 
"Child Life," March, May, and June, 191 3, January, 
February, March, and May, 1914; and parts of Chapter V 
were embodied in a paper presented to the Education 
Section of the British Association Meeting in 191 3. 




The Bearings of Modern Psychology 
on Educational Theory and Practice 

Part I 

CHAPTER I 
THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 

"The study of instinct in animals, including man, has led 
to important changes in modem educational theory, and 
though the corresponding changes in educational prac- 
tice are necessarily slower they are now becoming more 
widely evident. The importance to the teacher of some 
knowledge of what is meant by instinct can hardly be 
exaggerated. All the child's activities depend primarily on 
instinct and its developments, and all teaching must con- 
tinually avail itself of these activities. It would be rash 
to offer any definition of education in a book of this size, 
but it will readily be agreed that one, at least, of the 
educator's aims is that his pupils shall behave in a certain 
way when faced by certain stimuli. He wants the pupil, 
when presented with a multiplication sum, to behave in 
the particular way known as multiplying, and when con- 

9 



10 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

fronted with a comrade in distress to behave in the par- 
ticular way known as sympathetic and helpful. The 
child's instinctive tendencies are the -teacher's starting 
point in influencing behaviour for the simple reason 
that no other starting point is available. Good teachers 
have always appealed to them although they have not 
always recognised that they were doing so. The lack of 
knowledge is dangerous, however, in that certain in- 
stincts are more productive for the teacher's purpose 
than others, and also because various non-natural activi- 
ties can be stimulated by an appeal to such an instinct 
as fear, the semi-paralysing effects of which are calcu- 
lated in the end to defeat the teacher's real aim. 

The older view was, to put it briefly, that instinct 
belonged to the lower animals and reason to man. Human 
instincts, so far as they existed, were at the best undigni- 
fied and at the worst improper, and the object of educa- 
tion was to teach the child to overcome them or at least 
to keep them in subjection. Some remnants of this view 
still survive in the prejudice which appears even in recent 
books on education against the term instinct. Some 
writers prefer to term man's ' higher ' impulses spiritual, 
his ' lower ' instinctive — a distinction that can hardly be 
maintained without confusion of thought. In fact we 
are now bound to recognise that reasoning powers, 
morality and all that we most respect in man develop 
out of the child's instinctive tendencies, and that the 
germs of some at least of these ' higher ' impulses can 
be found in animals. The business of the teacher is first 
to find out what these tendencies are and then by pro- 



THE NATURE OF INSTINCT ii 

viding suitable material for their exercise, by suggestion 
and by help in various ways, to see that the resulting 
activities are educational. The giving of information, 
the encouragement of thought, and the stimulus to un- 
selfish activities must all be based on this study of in- 
stinct. . 

Various definitions have been given of instinct, but 
we may here be content to enumerate the distinctive 
features which characterise instinctive action, following 
in the main McDougall's treatment of the subject. 

In the first place, then, instincts are inherited or innate 
dispositions, i.e. they are part of the child's natural 
endowment and not the result of his nurture or educa- 
tion. This does not, of course, mean that all instinctive 
tendencies appear at or very shortly after birth, though 
the majority of them can be traced back to the first year 
of the child's life. It does however mean that instinctive 
action is unlearnt and arises naturally in response to the 
proper stimulus. A chicken just hatched apparently 
pecks at its food by instinct, and young spiders make webs 
from the same cause. 

Secondly, these inherited dispositions enable, or more 
strictly speaking, oblige their possessor to be aware of 
and to pay attention to those objects which, as we say, 
stimulate the instinct. A dog can and must pay atten- 
tion to the presence of a rat of which his master is quite 
unaware. In somewhat the same way children are keenly 
aware of the presence of unopened boxes or parcels which 
stimulate their curiosity, but which their father, with 
curiosity damped by larger experience, hardly notices. 



12 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

Thirdly, the perception o£ the object tends to have 
two results. It arouses in the perceiver the specific 
emotion which is a 'component part of the instinct 
stimulated, and it causes him to act, or to desire very 
strongly to act, in a certain more or less definite way. 
Thus we can distinguish three factors in the whole in- 
stinctive process. The stimulus, the emotion which 
accompanies the perception of the stimulus, and the 
reaction which follows. To refer again to the example 
given above : the dog sees or smells the rat, at once 
becomes violently excited, and tries eagerly to catch and 
kill it : all which we may explain by saying that the 
sight or smell of the rat arouses his hunting instinct. 
For the observer the connection between stimulus and 
reaction is usually the most noticeable feature, but to 
the individual whose instincts are stimulated the emotion 
is apt to be so strong as to overshadow everything else, 
and the reaction is sometimes carried out almost un- 
consciously. This fact is evident enough to introspec- 
tion, and in connection with it should be noted the sense 
of fitness and inevitableness which is often one of the 
most marked characteristics of instinctive actions from 
the point of view of the individual performing them. 
Children, if they were able readily to analyse and express 
their feelings, might not unreasonably ask " How could 
I have done anything else ? " when their elders inquire 
" why " they behaved so violently or so absurdly in a fit 
of anger or shyness. And indeed to reason with a 
child or adult who is excited by a strong instinctive 
emotion is generally waste of time. Reason must do 



THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 13 

its work either before or after the event. In later Ufe, 
it is true that since we all render some degree of lip- 
service to reason we often supply grounds for our in- 
stinctive actions afterwards, when we reflect upon them, 
and most people can convince themselves, if not their 
friends, that such actions were in reality reasoned out. 
In fact, however, reasoned actions proper are marked by a 
degree of deliberation and often of hesitancy quite foreign 
to instinctive actions. Of course many instinctive actions 
are quite reasonable in the sense that excellent reasons 
can be found for' them and that they may be what we 
should have done had we stopped to think ; but that is a 
different matter and does not justify us in asserting that 
we did think. 

Certain features of the instinctive process are of special 
importance to the teacher. The first of these is con- 
nected with the appeal made by the stimuli which arouse 
the corresponding instinct. Such stimuli are, as it were, 
appropriate to the organism and are readily perceived, 
although they may not seem specially noticeable to others. 
Or rather not only are they readily perceived but they 
cannot be ignored. The dog's perception of a cat or a 
rabbit, the sea-gull's perception of food thrown on the 
water, the butterfly's choice of a suitable leaf for its eggs 
are all instances of the same thing. Hence it follows that 
the teacher who uses material which appeals to a child's 
instincts need make little effort to secure attention ; 
that comes of itself. In fact the more directly the in- 
stinct is appealed to the less the child can help attending. 
We are all familiar with this in connection with nursery 



14 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

management, where the intelligent nurse keeps the new 
toys to give the baby when she is busy or on a wet after- 
noon, and the same thing is true in the schoolroom if we 
allow for the modifications of instinct by experience, 
with which we shall have to deal later. On the other 
hand, distractions from the subject in hand may also 
appeal to instinct. Few children, for instance, can attend 
to other things while their curiosity is stimulated by the 
sounds of a band in the street outside, and most teachers 
know that it is better to give up a few minutes to satisfy- 
ing this curiosity than to waste the lesson in fruitless 
protests. 

In the next place, the teacher must realise that the 
child's behaviour under the influence of instinctive 
emotion is, in early years especially and to some extent 
all through life, unreasoning, * blind,' * irresponsible,' or 
whatever similar word we like to apply to it. The child's 
physical organism supplies the suitable reaction and, as 
we have seen, his emotional feeling is too strong and 
engrossing to allow him to reflect. To blame a child 
for being angry may be justified as one way of showing 
him that anger is ' unsocial ' and is disapproved of, and 
thus giving him a motive to self-control. But the blame 
should be connected with the anger and not measured 
by the amount of damage done, which is after all chiefly 
the result of chance. 

Finally the teacher has to recognise the strength of 
the instinctive impulse and to understand the difficulty 
of thwarting or suppressing it. To guide it by stimula- 
tion in another and more desired direction is a much 



THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 15 

easier matter. Many children, for instance, are destruc- 
tive of toys and other things either from curiosity or 
from clumsy attempts at construction : to stop this 
directly is almost impossible, but it may be turned into 
harmless and even useful directions by giving them waste 
paper and other materials which can be torn up, by 
helping them when possible to take their toys to pieces 
and reconstruct them, and by the provision of suitable 
toys that vnll stand experimental treatment. If, however, 
a case arises where the instinctive tendency needs to be 
checked rather than directed this can only be done 
effectively by arousing another force as strong as itself, 
i.e. by appeal to another instinct. Fortunately for the 
teacher some instincts naturally tend to check and 
counteract one another and can be legitimately made 
use of in this way by the educator. The nurse who tries 
to persuade an angry baby to stop crying by knocking 
on its cot or offering it a new toy is justified in that she 
is appeahng to one instinct, curiosity, to overcome another, 
anger. A child's fear of a strange object may be over- 
come by its curiosity to find out what it is like. Or again, 
fear of animals may be overcome by the help of the 
protective instinct, as when a child is given perhaps a 
young and obviously harmless dog to look after and 
learns to understand other dogs in the process. But if 
no way of directing usefully or counteracting an instinc- 
tive tendency can be found, and its effects as manifested 
are definitely harmful, the best method of procedure 
is often to avoid stimulating it as much as pos- 
sible. Irritable children should be considerately treated 



1 6 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

until improved health or more developed interests make 
them less liable to fits of anger. This is the real force 
of that much-neglected maxim : " Fathers, provoke not 
your children to v^rath." This point is closely connected 
v^ith the grov^th of habit and we shall have to return to 
it later. 

We may now sum up briefly the standpoint of the 
teacher in respect to instinct. He must recognise that 
each child is prompted to action chiefly by its possession 
of instinctive tendencies. The young child will act in 
response to any stimulation of its instincts by appro- 
priate objects, and will act in the way determined by 
the instinct. Throughout the process he will be intent, 
interested whether pleasurably or painfully, hardly if at 
all open to reason and with difficulty distracted from his 
purpose. This purpose however need not be the end of 
the action as we see it and indeed is generally something 
much more immediate. This seems obvious and yet we 
are still apt to tell a young child to run about " to keep 
himself warm " and to be surprised when we come out 
later and find him dabbling in a cold puddle. 

Further, our knowledge of animal life and of the 
workings of instinct under more primitive conditions 
suggests that the best and most effective development 
can only come from the exercise and satisfaction of all 
the instincts to the fullest extent practicable under 
modern conditions. The domestic dog going for his 
walk, delightful creature though he is, is only half alive 
compared with the same dog when hunting rabbits. 
And for children too, the best and most complete develop- 



THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 17 

ment comes from freely exercising their instincts and 
developing by this means powers of thought and wider 
interests. Here, however, a difficulty arises, not yet 
wholly understood. The child's instincts are his in- 
heritance from primitive times when life was led under 
very different conditions and they are not all equally 
suited to life as it is to-day. Some of them seem almost 
wholly unsuited. Yet it is suggested that children and 
adults may suffer seriously from unsatisfied or ' balked ' 
instincts, as Graham Wallas calls them, and that a strained 
and unstable nervous condition may result from lack of 
stimulus for such important primitive instincts as 
pugnacity and fear. Some educationalists indeed believe 
that the best environment for children up to about twelve 
years of age, would be one which reproduced primitive 
conditions to some extent and allowed a free life of 
hunting, fishing and outdoor games in a more or less 
rough country or sea-side district, with little direct 
teaching and little appeal at this stage to the more 
social and humane instincts. Children might thus 
satisfy some of their less ' civilised ' instinctive tendencies 
at a time when they could do so without harm to them- 
selves or their neighbours and with considerable benefit 
to their physical development. It is the less necessary 
to discuss this suggestion at length since it is obviously 
impracticable for the great majority of children, but the 
point of view which prompts it is sufficiently correct 
to deserve the teacher's sympathetic consideration and 
to determine him to provide at any rate some legitimate 
outlet for the wilder and more primitive instincts which 



1 8 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

are apt to be neglected or disapproved o£. It may how- 
ever be noted that these instincts can be at any rate 
partially satisfied under civilised conditions, and that the 
boy whose curiosity and love of adventure finds an outlet 
in the study of birds and animal life is as * naturally,' 
and more intelligently, developed than the boy who has 
always a stone in his hand to throw at any living creature 
that may turn up, and there is no reason why the former 
boy should not grow up as manly and as good a * sports- 
man ' as the latter, though he may find less pleasure in 
mere killing for its own sake. 

The practical outcome of all this study of instinct in 
children is the need for greater freedom in school life. 
The teacher must provide material and a suitable en- 
vironment — this latter no easy task — must give help 
when needed and must be content to let the child work 
out its own salvation to a much greater extent than was 
formerly thought possible. This need for freedom is 
now widely recognised, but a further point still needs 
emphasis, and that is that freedom, to be really valuable, 
does not mean merely that all the children in the class 
are enjoying their work and do it willingly. A skilful 
teacher can produce this effect and yet teach what is 
not really suited to the child's stage of development. 
Instances of this are still to be found in infant schools 
where the teacher has to give lessons in such subjects 
as reading, writing or number whilst her pupils are still 
too young for them. The clever teacher falls back upon 
the child's love of play or story and persuades it into learn- 
ing by indirect means. But the interest thus aroused is 



THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 19 

artificial in that it has no direct connection with the 
subject matter of the lesson, and much time is wasted 
because the child's attention is but half secured and he 
learns slowly and with great expenditure of energy on 
the teacher's part. Later on when the child's command 
of words is greater and his control over his muscles has 
increased he will learn to read and write with genuine 
interest in half the time, and without the strained ad- 
mixture of irrelevant story. 

Effective freedom means that the child's procedure 
is self-directed within the Unfits of the material avail- 
able, and much of the teacher's skill is directed to pro- 
viding material that may be suitable to her ultimate 
purpose as well as to the child's immediate ends. The 
Montessori system of education provides a clear example 
of what is meant by this, whether or no we entirely agree 
with the choice of material advocated. In a Montessori 
school the child chooses its own material from the 
toys and occupations provided and works and plays at 
its own pace, alone or with a group of other children, 
according to its inclination ; it also changes its occupa- 
tion at will. There is thus little or no class teaching, 
though for certain games and in most English schools 
of this type, for stories, the children may all come 
together. Clearly a school of this sort is only possible 
if the occupations provided appeal to the children's 
instinctive tendencies, that is, if they find them attrac- 
tive and absorbing. The teacher, on the other hand, 
may see in them the means to an end and may note the 
child's progress towards the skills of reading and writing, 



20 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

or towards an understanding of number. It is indeed 
only by remembering the nature o£ instincts that we can 
explain what is at first sight an amazing result — that o£ 
a large number of children working more or less inde- 
pendently without interfering with one another, and with 
no compulsion except that exerted by the general 
atmosphere of the school, the sight of the material and 
the pleasure of occasional help and encouragement from 
the teacher or their companions. The contrast between 
this and a school managed on the old lines, with its half- 
attentive children doing Careless work and on the look 
out for every form of surreptitious amusement, needs no 
comment. 

It is not necessary here to give any list of the chief 
human instincts, and indeed different writers have 
adopted different methods of classification. Thorndike, 
for example, enumerates about fifty instincts, some of 
which, such as sucking, other writers have called reflexes. 
Others in the list, such as specific fears, of noises, of open 
places, of the dark, and so on, can conveniently be grouped 
together under the one heading * fear.' In McDougalPs 
classification, where special importance is attached to the 
emotional side of instinct, the list is much shorter, because 
in several cases impulses apparently innate have no specific 
emotion which can be distinguished as characteristic of 
them. Thus McDougall classes sympathy, imitation, 
and suggestion as general innate tendencies because the 
accompanying emotion in each case is vague and indeter- 
minate. Again, some of the instincts in Thorndike's list, 
such as those of creeping, standing, walking, ripen and 



THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 21 

either disappear or develop into habits long before the 
child can describe the accompanying emotion, although 
this may very likely be of a specific and distinguishing 
nature. Both wider and narrower classifications may be 
of use to the teacher : the former when he wants to 
study the various forms of activity he may expect to 
find in young children and to distinguish those generally 
believed to be innate from those due to environment : 
the narrower, as giving a list of the known strong emo- 
tional impulses connected with certain stimuli and likely 
to call out certain reactions. The narrower list, if we 
include the so-called innate tendencies, contains most 
of the impulses upon which the teacher must rely in 
school life and for which he can provide appropriate 
stimuli : many of the others are apparently dependent 
upon physiological conditions and stimuli which are not 
directly within the teacher's control. Thus it is easy to 
stimulate a child's curiosity, anger or fear, but difficult 
to stimulate him to creep. He will try to creep of his 
own accord as soon as he feels able to do so. Hence the 
narrower and more definite treatment of instinct is of 
the greater direct importance to the teacher, and it is 
on this account that we have adopted it for the purposes 
of this book. 

The tendency to play demands special consideration 
because of its primary importance in child life and its 
widespread uses in education. It is sometimes called 
an instinct, but if we adopt the criteria suggested above 
we cannot give it this title because there is no specific 
stimulus which arouses it, nor, apparently, any one specific 



22 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

emotion felt while th^ individual i^ playing. In fact the 
simplest view of play is that it describes the attitude of 
the young child towards life. It is hardly too much to 
say that the distinction between work and play is an 
adult distinction and has little meaning for the child, or 
for those who are observing him. If we adopt this 
standpoint, however, we must not of course limit * play ' 
to what is easy. As far as effort goes, few adults work 
harder than a healthy child of eighteen months or two 
years old, and in a suitable environment this whole- 
hearted energy of body and mind, entering vigorously 
into whatever is on hand, should be kept up to some extent 
into late childhood and even into adult life. We say * to 
some extent ' because with developing interests distrac- 
tions arise and the interests themselves imply greater 
strain as the child's purpose becomes more definite and 
less immediate. But granting this limitation, the play 
attitude is the right one for the child and the only one 
natural for him. If however by * play ' we mean mere 
* fooling ' — good in its way but without a definite end 
in view — then the child, even from babyhood, both 
works and plays. He works at talking with an almost 
painful effort to express himself and be understood ; he 
works, for example, at taking books out of a shelf and 
piling them up on a chair, or at filling his bucket with 
pebbles. He also * fools,' throwing things about aimlessly 
with delighted laughter, pulling someone's hair, rolHng 
on the floor, and so on. In the former cases interruption 
or misunderstanding is serious and generally results in a 
storm, in the latter one form of * fooling ' passes readily 



THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 23 

into another or into one of the forms of * work.' ' Fool- 
ing' is often valuable physically and, except for some 
specially excitable children, appears to aiford more mental 
rest than a healthy child can get otherwise than in sleep, 
but it is not of much direct value to the teacher in school, 
and it seems a misuse of language to restrict the term 
* play ' to it to the exclusion of the other more pur- 
posive attitude. 

Finally, it may be pointed out that when instinct is 
recognised as the basis of school training it is well to 
remember that individuals differ both in rapidity of 
development and in natural endowment. All children 
do not appear to experience instinctive emotions with 
equal force, and, moreover, instincts appear to ripen at 
slightly different times in different cases. Hence classi- 
fication according to age is misleading, as indeed is well 
known. It is more important to note that greater free- 
dom of choice of occupation and less rigid insistence on 
class teaching will materially simplify the problem of 
classification. The child can satisfy his instincts with 
the material best suited to him without retarding or 
accelerating the pace of his fellows, and the result is to 
remove a serious cause of strain and friction. 

It remains to consider how the conception of discipline 
has been altered by the stress laid on freedom and in- 
stinctive development. Teachers have long been familiar 
with Herbart's distinction between government and 
guidance ; they have long agreed that * guidance ' is the 
final goal. The change in modern times seems to be that 
the period for guidance has been put earlier, in fact, 



24 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

apart from considerations of physical welfare which act 
as an important check, some theorists would say, the 
earlier the better. But this does not mean disorder and 
anarchy, it only means that the instinctively occupied 
child is intent on his own business and is neither * naughty' 
nor inclined to interfere with his neighbours for the 
mere sake of interference. 

Still the teacher's government has its place. On the 
one hand the child's own pursuits may in themselves 
prove disturbing to his companions, and here some 
readjustment is needed. Moreover, times and seasons 
need to be observed in most communities and certainly 
in most schools, and the child, like the genius, resents, 
reasonably enough, interruptions. A baby is apt to be 
righteously indignant at being stopped in his play to 
have his dinner, and is perhaps still more angry at having 
his hands washed, although both these functions are 
enjoyable in themselves. And the same thing occurs 
with older children, though in school this is lessened by 
the tendency to imitate and accept suggestions from 
the movements of the rest of the class. Still every 
teacher will find occasional need to enforce a certain 
sequence of events. 

In practically all schools too teachers will have a 
certain proportion of children who have been ill-managed 
at home or elsewhere and who have thus already acquired 
a wrong attribute towards their fellows. Such children 
may have been treated too severely, until they suspect 
all authority of being harsh and unreasonable, while at 
the same time they have grown so accustomed to punish- 



THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 25 

ment that it has little restraining effect upon them. 
Others may have been spoiled, in that their selfish im- 
pulses have been pampered at the expense of their un- 
selfish ones and they have grown capricious and lazy 
from overmuch attention and well-meant attempts to 
satisfy every wish. Others may have experienced admix- 
ture of both treatments. In cases like these the children 
will need time to adapt themselves to their new environ- 
ment, and in the interval some friction is hard to avoid. 

* Government,' then, will still be necessary in some 
degree, and probably punishment too must be admitted, 
although we may readily acknowledge that recourse to 
punishment is an admission of failure on the teacher's 
part as "well as on the child's. Moreover, the word 
punishment is to be understood in a wide sense as meaning 
any method of making the consequences of his actions 
unpleasant to the child. Some schools claim to have 
* no ' punishments, but if the claim be examined it will 
generally be found that what has really been done is to 
produce such an atmosphere that a word or two of blame, 
or the disapproval of the other children, is effective to 
restrain the pupils as much as is desired. In brief, punish- 
ment has been made more civilised, though, be it noted, 
not necessarily less severe, but has not been altogether 
abolished. Punishment in this wider sense of the term 
is indeed an effective deterrent throughout life, and 
most of us can remember occasions when the surprise or 
disapproval of friends proved a sufficiently severe penalty. 

Punishments, then, will be occasionally necessary, but 
we may rule out at once any that are either injurious to 



26 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

health or tend to make a burden of things that we wish 
the child to enjoy or are merely silly. With this proviso 
the only sane method of estimating the value of a punish- 
ment seems to be by its results as a deterrent. Both 
teacher and child should understand that the punish- 
ment' is intended to remind or to deter, and if it fails to 
work something else must be tried. This should be 
obvious. Yet we still find schools where children are 
* kept in ' week after week, in some cases almost day after 
day, for some particular fault. Yet clearly if being kept in 
does not have the desired eifect at first the child becomes 
used to it. Being punished may grow into a habit as 
readily as anything else. As a rule if a fault recurs again 
and again in spite of punishment it is a sign that some 
readjustment is needed. Something is being demanded 
of the child to which at present he cannot respond, and 
the teacher who, through a mistaken sense of dignity or 
an excessive respect for rules, continues to insist, is at 
best putting himself into an absurd position, and at worst 
doing the child serious harm. Such teachers have the 
naivete of certain magistrates who never tire of express- 
ing their surprise at the number of convictions recorded 
against some of the prisoners who come before them, 
not realising that if the first term in gaol does not act as 
a deterrent the succeeding terms are proportionately 
less and less likely to do so. 

Finally even in regard to punishment self-government 
should be kept in mind. Whatever point of behaviour 
the teacher insists on should be clearly understood and 
if possible approved by the child — not a very difficult 



THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 27 

matter since most children are extraordinarily open to 
reason and eager to please. Then the punishment should 
be regarded not as retributive, still less as vindictive, but 
as a reminder. The child's attitude tov^^ards punishment 
might well be that of the small boy who having been 
sent into the corner two or three times for putting jam 
on the visitor's dress, came back finally remarking as he 
climbed into his chair, " I think that's done it," and 
behaved properly for the rest of the meal. It has even 
been found effective to let children choose their own 
punishment out of perhaps two or three specified. This 
removes any resentment and gives them a personal 
interest in the result to be attained which is likely to 
make that particular punishment effective as a reminder. 
It will be easily realised that punishment is hardly if 
ever appHcable or likely to be effective in the case of 
so-called moral faults— lying, cruelty, and so on, though 
it may lead the child to conceal them. Faults of this 
sort need to be remedied by arousing other impulses and 
giving special stimulus to instinctive tendencies opposed 
to these particular faiUngs. Even the social punishment 
of blame and disapproval needs to be cautiously used, 
and here as elsewhere in life praise of the good is infinitely 
more effective than condemnation of the bad. Indeed 
the study of instinctive development leads us always to 
positive rather than negative discipHne wherever it is 
possible. Stimulate the child to do differently in the 
future rather than punish him for what he has done 
badly in the past. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MODIFICATION OF INSTINCT: 
PURPOSIVE ACTION 

Instinctive action is unlearnt. It takes place in conse- 
quence of the inherited nature of the organism and will 
take place apart from any training. But this must not 
be taken to mean that the process is absolutely fixed and 
unchangeable. Fixity and definiteness used to be re- 
garded as a distinguishing feature of instinctive action, 
and this w^as perhaps one reason w^hy man's dependence 
on instinct wsis minimised. Variability was thought to 
imply reason. But it is now generally recognised that 
even in insects and animals the fixity of the instinctive 
reaction has frequently been exaggerated. On the one 
hand individual variations are frequent, and on the other 
the animal can * learn by experience.' This learning by 
experience may result either in some modification of 
the reaction, or in the instinct being excited by stimuli 
which vary in same degree from those primarily appro- 
priate to it. Of the three factors in the instinctive pro- 
cess, the stimulus, the emotion and the reaction, the 
first and last are thus found to be subject to modification 
by experience and by deliberate training — on the other 

28 



INSTINCT : PURPOSIVE ACTION 29 

hand, the emotional factor is held to be little susceptible 
of modification in the history of the individual, and has 
probably been the most constant of the three in the 
history of the race. Thus an angry modern Englishman 
probably feels very much as angry primitive man felt, 
but different things may arouse his anger and his reactions 
may be different. 

We need not therefore expect to find definite and 
invariable instinctive reactions in children, though we 
may expect resemblance to a common type. Thus of 
a family of children all crawl before walking, but one 
crawls on hands and knees, one pushes itself along in a 
half-sitting position with a hand free to clasp a toy, and 
a third trots on all fours. Similar differences in the various 
instinctive reactions will be found throughout, and ex- 
amples can easily be multiplied by any observer of chil- 
dren. More important, however, to the teacher is the 
fact that instinctive reactions are modifiable by experi- 
ence and that ' experience ' includes the various forms of 
direct and indirect training. In practice, of course, it is 
often diflRcult to tell whether varying reactions are due 
to some innate differences in the children observed or 
are the effects of environment, including perhaps some 
form of training. Thus in the example given above the 
different methods of crawHng may have been, and very 
probably were, due to some physiological distinction ;' 
but at least in the case of the child who crawled so as to 
hold a toy the position may have resulted from some 
special attachment to a particular toy at the time when 
he began to .crawL In the activities of rather older 



30 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

children, too, it is often impossible to say whether some 
particularly characteristic * reaction ' — special interest in 
some particular subject, for example — is due to a 
special appeal made by his environment or to some 
innate tendency or gift. Hence it is rash to expect 
that an environment which we have found successful in 
arousing certain interests or producing certain behaviour 
in one child will prove equally successful in another, 
though we may hope that it will do so. With this warn- 
ing we may pass on to discuss the importance to the 
teacher of the question of the modification of instinctive 
reactions and of the stimuli which produce them. 

As has been pointed out, it is often difficult to decide 
what determines the form of the first reaction or the 
first few reactions, but it is clear that after these first 
few reactions the particular way of carrying out the 
instinctive act becomes habitual and is likely to persist 
on subsequent occasions whenever, or as long as, that 
particular activity is practised. A child does not, as a 
rule, unlearn his method of crawling after he has once 
acquired it," and, though he may vary it occasionally, he 
generally lapses into the favourite form when he is in a 
hurry. And when we consider the more complex in- 
stinctive reactions we find the same thing occurring. 
Here too an habitual form of reaction soon appears and 
'becomes relatively persistent. Every child has certain 
definite ways of showing anger, affection, curiosity, and 
so on, and these ways become habitual by constant use 
and often persist into adult life. An interesting example 
of the use to which this fact may be put in education is 



INSTINCT : PURPOSIVE ACTION 31 

found in some o£ Dr. Montessori's apparatus, devised 
to give children opportunities in school of practising 
certain enjoyable movements such as that of climbing 
along a gate, vv^hich are calculated to give them better 
habits of balance and control and ultimately better 
habits of v^alking, running, and so on. 

But the teacher can also modify reactions by a more 
direct method. It is obvious that in any creature capable 
of profiting by experience any reaction v^^hich fails to 
satisfy the instinct in question will tend to be avoided 
in the future, w^hereas any successful reaction will tend 
to be repeated next time. This is the basis on which 
rests the most effective ways of * training ' animals to 
modify their behaviour in a desired direction, and it has 
been used from time immemorial in training children. 
In this way the curious child learns not to snatch at the 
object which stimulates his curiosity but to ask for it, 
and later to ask questions about it, possibly without even 
attempting to handle it. Similarly, children learn to 
inhibit the more violent expressions of anger, such as 
kicking and screaming, and though they still feel and show 
anger, they choose less noticeable forms of relieving their 
feelings. Again, in some families demonstrative expres- 
sions of affection are encouraged and these become 
habitual to the child, in others the forms of expression 
favoured are quieter and the child adapts himself accord- 
ingly. Much of the child's training in good manners 
consists in thus favouring or making successful certain 
methods of satisfying instinctive impulses to the ex- 
clusion of other. methods. But people are apt to expect 



32 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

too much from the system and to hope that by making all 
reactions to certain instincts sufficiently unpleasant they 
will prevent the excitation of the emotion altogether. 
They hope by ridicule or other deterrents to make a 
timid child fearless, or by snubbing questions to cure 
another of inconvenient curiosity. Such treatment, in 
fact, is apt to make the timid child more nervous than 
before and to incite the curious child to the discovery of 
less legitimate ways of satisfying its curiosity. Once 
stimulated, the instinctive process is like a stream which 
it is difficult to dam up or choke off, whilst to turn it 
aside and modify its course may be comparatively easy. 
Just as we find children differing in their reactions to 
instinctive emotions, so also we shall find different 
stimuli arousing their instincts, and these stimuli will 
vary according to the child's past history. Take, for 
example, the instinct of fear. Children learn by experi- 
ence that certain objects of which they were at first 
frightened, owing to the noise they made, their sudden 
movements and what not, are in fact harmless, just as 
cattle grazing in a field near a railway soon grow in- 
different to passing trains. Children also learn that 
other objects not in themselves terrifying are in fact 
dangerous. Thus they learn not to touch fire, not to 
walk on a railway line, or to be afraid of snakes. In all 
these cases the modified effect of the stimulus may be 
either the result of direct experience, when the child 
learns as an animal might do, or the result of increasing 
knowledge often gained by the explanations and warn- 
ings of their elders. Moreover, by association they 



INSTINCT : PURPOSIVE ACTION 33 

-acquire fear of objects which resemble something that 
has frightened them or which in some way remind them 
of it. Thus a child who has been bitten by a dog is 
afraid of all dogs afterwards, however harmless they may 
be, and a child who has been terrified by a cow on a cer- 
tain road will try to avoid that road on his daily walks, 
although he may know that the cow is no longer there. 
As children grow older, however, knowledge and reason 
both help increasingly to modify the stimuli which tend 
to excite their fears. They know how to distinguish the 
ill-tempered dog or cow from others, and act accordingly, 
and they reason about their fears of fire or of the dark. 
Most people, indeed, can reduce such terrors to fairly 
sane proportions in later life even when they suffered 
from them excessively in childhood. 

Further examples of the modification of stimulus and 
reaction may be found in the case of other instincts. 
We will consider briefly two : curiosity and construe- 
tiveness. 

Curiosity is stimulated by what is novel and inexplic- 
able. At first the child's curiosity is aroused by every 
fresh object, or rather by any change in his environment 
that he is able to perceive. A baby may be said to be 
curious about everything that he attends to. Light, 
moving objects, brightly coloured objects are all noticed 
early, then gradually, as he becomes more familiar with 
his surroundings, he begins to take many of them for 
granted and only shows interest and curiosity in them 
when they are altered in appearance or position. But 
he is still curious about new objects when these come 

M.P.— 3 



34 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

within liis powers of perception. He shows his interest 
by certain well-known reactions which consist in follow- 
ing the object with his eyes, expressing surprise by some 
exclamation and, when he is able to speak, by words, 
grasping or attempting to grasp it, and if he succeeds 
in getting hold of it by handling it in all sorts of ways, 
and, unless prevented, by biting and sucking it. Later 
on he will also ask questions about it, but this does not 
as a rule replace his desire to touch and handle. This 
process of examination will be continued until his curi- 
osity is temporarily satisfied. He may wish to re-examine 
the same object next day, but his curiosity will be less 
this time, and unless the handling process is pleasurable 
and leads to some form of play he will soon lose interest 
in that particular thing. Naturally as his powers of 
perception increase a wider circle of things will arouse 
his curiosity, but the sequence of keen interest, examina- 
tion in any way possible, and loss of interest when curi- 
osity is temporarily satisfied, will repeat themselves. 
At the age of eighteen months or two years an intelligent 
child shows curiosity about a great variety of objects : 
cows feeding in a field or walking down the road, pieces 
of paper dropped by the roadside, a man cleaning win- 
dows, tiny kittens, boats being unloaded, and so on. 
But gradually, alongside of this general curiosity, the 
growth of a more specialised curiosity can be traced. 
This develops along the lines of activities that have 
proved pleasurable and hence tend to be repeated. 
Increased familiarity with the objects now makes him 
able to perceive much smaller differences, and hence his 



INSTINCT : PURPOSIVE ACTION 35 

curiosity is readily excited by a comparatively small 
novelty in these special directions. One familiar form 
of such specialised curiosity is that aroused in many 
children by railways, another is connected with animals, 
another with houses. Even children of four or five will 
be found to have special interests and a marked tendency 
to curiosity in some one or more of these or other similar 
directions. The starting-point of such an interest is 
often difficult to trace, but once given the direction, 
interest, curiosity, and knowledge will rapidly increase 
unless the environment is very unfavourable. As a rule, 
any such interest is apt to be encouraged by presents of 
suitable toys, by what the child is taken to see, by the 
tales told him, and so on. 

By the time the child is eight or nine then, we find 
him not only still curious about things in general that 
strike him as novel, but more particularly curious in 
certain directions, and in these directions Vv'e often find 
him possessing a surprising amount of knowledge and a 
surprising power of noticing fresh developments and of 
showing intelligent curiosity about them. In other 
directions perhaps he will seem equally surprisingly dull 
and incurious. At the same time we find that the 
means taken to satisfy his curiosity will have developed 
and altered. He will no longer bite or suck, but he may 
question his elders, seek information from books, or 
perhaps experiment and investigate on his own account. 

A somewhat similar process of development may be 
traced in connection with the child's constructive in- 
stinct. This instinct shows itself at first in a tendency to 



36 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

dabble in water and mess about with sand or mud or 
any convenient material, and probably also in that arrange- 
ment and rearrangement, piling up and packing away of 
toys, bricks, books, shells, or anything else available which 
is such a favourite occupation with many young children. 
Suggestion from others generally plays a large part in start- 
ing the child's activities in more definite directions. 
Thus by tradition the baby generally begins his building 
efforts by making ' towers ' to knock down, just as when 
he is older he will build ' castles ' on the sands. In time 
he builds houses and railways, led by imitation and 
suggestion in the first instance, but adding and working 
out novelties for himself. When once he has enjoyed a 
bit of constructive play he tends to repeat it at the next 
opportunity, and thus he generally forms a habit of 
building some particular object when left to himself. 
Naturally such a habit is often connected with those special 
interests whose development we have already considered 
in connection with the instinct of curiosity. The same 
thing is seen in children's * free ' drawings. They 
develop habits of drawing houses or people or trees, and 
carry on this particular activity for long periods, some- 
times for months. This, of course, only applies to 
drawings done spontaneously and not to those done for 
a special purpose, though even in illustrating stories 
some children will introduce a favourite object into 
practically every illustration they draw, whatever the 
story may be. In such cases the instinctive impulse has 
found satisfaction in the use of certain materials in a 
certain way, and the activity in this form has become 



INSTINCT : PURPOSIVE ACTION 37 

relatively habitual. We say * relatively ' since obviously 
and indeed fortunately such habits are easily disturbed 
by fresh stimulus from playmates or elders or by the 
varying demands of school life. But in the main, just as 
the child tends to develop specialised interests with their 
accompanying specialised curiosity, so he tends to acquire 
habits of occupying himself with certain forms of con- 
structive work. So, too, if these forms are too * childish ' 
and incapable of development his constructive instinct 
may apparently wear itself out on them until interest in 
construction lapses altogether, possibly never to revive. 

We can now consider more particularly the educative 
bearing of these modifications in instinct. It will be 
convenient to discuss this from two points of view, first 
in reference to the growth of. purposive or voluntary 
action, second in reference to the development of mental 
activities and thought. The latter discussion will be 
deferred to the following chapter. This division is 
adopted because we are accustomed to distinguish 
between the teacher's function of aiding the child to 
form definite aims and of guiding the selection of these 
aims, from his function in helping the child to attain 
these aims whether by offering information or by encourag- 
ing thought or by inducing perseverance. 'It must be 
noted, however, that purpose and thought necessarily 
develop together. The child cannot advance far in 
ability to seek an end without increased mental power to 
realise it and to work out the means to attain it. And on 
the other hand, his mental growth is closely connected 
with his efforts to attain his purpose. 



38 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

Now all instinctive action is purposive in the sense 
that it satisfies the child's emotional needs and is what 
he desires to do at the moment. But as we have seen, 
the reaction follows so quickly and, as it were, inevitably, 
on the stimulus that the child is sometimes hardly con- 
scious of having acted until afterwards, and he has at 
first usually no consciousness of an aim. It is better 
therefore to reserve the term purposive for actions in 
which there is a definite end in view. This end may 
either coincide with the activity itself or the activity 
may be regarded as a means to the end. We may begin 
by giving an example of the development of purpose 
observed in a child of eighteen months. The child could 
walk holding on to something but not alone ; while play- 
ing about he happened to pull himself up with the help 
of a light chair which of course slid away as he touched it. 
He followed it holding on all the time, and in this way 
pushed it across the room. So far the reaction was 
merely a response to instinctive activity and play ten- 
dencies, but at this point purpose began to show itself. 
At the end of the room the chair stuck and he showed 
his desire to push it back again by crawling across the 
room to fetch someone to help. It was turned round 
and he started again. ^ This process was repeated for ten 
or fifteen minutes. The following evening the sight of 
the chair at once aroused the desire to push it, arid he 
asked to have it brought out. This went on for several 
evenings until he wearied of the game. This activity, 
although so simple, shows the characteristics of pur- 
posive action : (i) the idea of some definite end, i.e. to 



INSTINCT : PURPOSIVE ACTION 39 

push the chair across the room ; (2) the thought about 
and adoption of means to attain the end in the face of 
obstacles, i.e. by fetching help to move the chair out of 
the corner. All cases of early purposive action are very 
similar. The instinctive activities lead accidentally to 
some specially pleasurable activity. The pleasure taken 
in the result makes that particular action clearer to the 
child's mind and he repeats it. Some difficulty arises, 
and in order to overcome this he has to seek some means 
to attain his end. Of course the difficulties are at times 
too great, and then according to his temperament and 
the strength of his purpose the child either cries or turns 
to some easier game. 

As the child gets older his powers of forming an idea 
of his aim increases and he is also better able to think 
out suitable means, but the process is essentially the same 
in that his instincts and his developing interests lead him 
to some activity the idea of w^hich is made clearer to 
his mind by its pleasurable nature, and often still clearer 
by the difficulties w^hich have to be overcome in its 
pursuit. The following example may serve to illustrate 
this later stage. A boy had developed a great interest in 
building houses with sand and bricks and in examining 
the arrangement of rooms in real houses for purposes of 
comparison and imitation. He was fond of drawing 
and used to plan out imaginary houses on paper as well 
as in the sand, and make up stories about them. Later 
on he, as children often do, developed this game into a 
more elaborate one involving imaginary countries with 
towns, villages, and so on. When he was about seven 



40 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

years old this imaginative game occupied a large share of 
his thoughts, and as he had several times seen maps and 
had easy access to them, he naturally turned from making 
plans of houses to drawing maps of his imaginary coun- 
tries. In making these maps he wished to show the 
position of physical features and towns, but more par- 
ticularly of mines, railways, and so on. Hence by means 
of questions and by a further study of atlases he learnt 
how to indicate mountains, rivers, railways, coal mines, 
and even rainfall in his maps, and also to understand 
something of the meaning of scale and the uses of lines 
of latitude and longitude. In this case the purpose was 
strong enough and definite enough to lead him through 
a number of varied activities and investigations and to 
enable him to master a number of details some of which 
were by no means easy for a child of his age. Incidentally 
he developed a genuine interest in geography and ac- 
quired some general geographical knowledge in addition 
to that connected with his special purpose of map making. 
It should be noted that no particular encouragement 
was given him by his elders beyond a readiness to answer 
questions. 

Purposive action in quite young children is necessarily 
connected with their instinctive impulses, but as these 
impulses develop into more or less habitual activities 
and the child acquires definite interests in connection 
with these, his aims will often be related to these inter- 
ests. Consequently older children must be expected to 
show purpose in widely differing directions corresponding 
to the variety of their experience and developing tastes. 



INSTINCT : PURPOSIVE ACTION 41 

We may now briefly summarise the characteristics 
that the teacher may expect to find in such cases of 
purposive action. Some o£ these characteristics are, 
however, closely connected with mental growth and will 
have to be referred to again later on. 

(i) The purpose is the child's own, and the idea of it 
has come to him in direct connection with his instinctive 
activities or with his dominant interests. Hence his desire 
to attain it will be proportionately strong and may have 
something of the strength of the original instinctive im- 
pulse. He will need no urging to carry it out, and indeed 
anger and resentment may be roused by any discourage- 
ment, and disappointment will be considerable if material 
obstacles should prove insurmountable. 

(2) Since the idea of the end generally comes to the 
child in connection with his habitual activities, he is 
likely to have a stock of ideas on the subject which will 
enable him to understand new points and to overcome 
difficulties with apparent ease. This quickness will 
often surprise us if we do not know the child's past 
history and merely compare him with other children of 
like age and ability but different experience. Moreover, 
quick progress in achieving a purpose that is the child's 
own in this way has often to be contrasted with the slow- 
ness and apparent stupidity with which the same child 
works towards an end suggested to him by others. He 
may be eager to attain the suggested end, but the stock 
of ideas connected with his previous activities is here 
absent and this explains the difference in result. 

(3) The knowledge gained in pursuit of the end is 



42 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

likely to be retained owing to the zest with which it is 
acquired and its connection with existing interesting 
ideas. Such past knowledge often forms a starting-point 
for fresh interests and new lines of thought when the 
immediate purpose is satisfied. Thus the geographical 
interest in the case of the boy mentioned above may 
probably persist long after his pleasure in imaginary 
countries has died away . 

(4) The ends that children set before themselves, 
though they are sometimes attained with surprising 
ease for the reasons given above, yet on other occasions 
give ample opportunity for hard work and the conquest 
of difficulties. The struggles which children sometimes 
make to succeed in their self-imposed tasks in the face of 
numerous obstacles are a partial answer to those who 
complain that modern education makes everything * easy ' 
for the child. 

We may conclude this chapter by noting the teacher's 
special responsibilities in regard to this development of 
purpose in children. Here one of his most important 
duties is to see that the child's aims are not all selfish. 
The self-regarding and individualistic instincts are 
naturally very strong since they are closely connected 
with the preservation and growth of every young crea- 
ture. But the child has also other instincts belonging to 
him as a * social ' animal. Of these love and affection, 
the susceptibility to praise and blame which arise out of 
the instincts of self-assertion and self-abasement, and 
the protective instinct are the most important. All 
these instincts can be most effectively aroused in con- 



INSTINCT : PURPOSIVE ACTION 43 

nection with habitual activities and interests. The child's 
purpose may thus be unselfish while yet he is working 
at pursuits of which he is already fond. Gradually he 
may pass from this to unselfish activities which are less 
attractive in themselves. Love and affection, for example, 
should be given plenty of scope in the performance of 
acts of kindness and consideration which are in them- 
selves pleasurable to normal, healthy children. In this 
way the aim of being useful and kind becomes a more 
permanent one, and as the child grows older he is better 
able to respond to more serious demands on his un- 
selfishness. .The protective, or as it is sometimes called 
the parental, instinct is perhaps even more valuable as 
an incentive and is sometimes particularly strong in 
healthy, vigorous children whose other impulses seem 
predominantly individualistic. The term * parental ' 
is somewhat misleading because it is apparently apt to 
suggest ' maternal ' and to convey the idea that this 
particular instinct is generally pecuhar to girls, whereas 
the protective instinct to take care of and look after some- 
thing weaker than oneself appears to be equally strong 
in both sexes. 

In a normal home all these instincts are naturally and 
continually appealed to, indeed home life is sometimes 
criticised as tending to undue limitation of the child's 
individualistic impulses after he has passed the stage of 
babyhood. In school the position is apt to be reversed. 
Most schools are organised on individualistic lines, and 
even where modern notions of greater freedom and more 
scope for the child's instinctive activities are accepted 



44 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

they have often been grafted on to the older organisa- 
tion. Hence appeal is only made to those instincts which 
can be satisfied without too great a revolution in the 
previous state of affairs. But co-operative work, kindly 
help and interest for others, possibilities of doing acts of 
service for the general good and so on are too novel to 
be readily provided for, so that it is only in a few schools, 
and these generally for quite young children, that we 
find anything like the appeal of a good home made to 
the child's social as distinct from his individualistic 
instincts. It is little wonder that critics complain that 
freedom in school makes children selfish, since the appeal 
is so often only to one half of their nature. And in the 
primary schools at least the still prevalent lack of co- 
operation between parent and teacher cuts the child off 
from many important outlets for and stimuli to his 
social impulses. To give only one instance out of many.- 
The child taught at home finds great pleasure in draw- 
ing ' pictures ' and later in making presents for his 
parents and brothers and sisters, and the construction of 
such presents adds considerably to his interest and 
pleasure in handwork. In schools his drawing and con- 
structive impulses are still sometimes only directed to 
producing a bit of work good enough to be shown to 
the rest of the class or to be displayed on the wall or 
shelf. 

In the second place the teacher must recognise that 
children differ widely in their powers of initiative and 
in their ability to form definite aims just as the nature 
of these -aims themselves will differ. Some are inventive 



INSTINCT : PURPOSIVE ACTION 45 

and full of spontaneity and freshness, others are slower 
to invent but perhaps more painstaking in the perform- 
ance ; these latter have something of the craftsman in 
them and take pride in good v^^orkmanship. Some v^ant 
to work at a thing until it is finished ; others are eager 
in thinking out their plan and selecting material, but 
their purpose weakens when these initial problems are 
settkd. In each case sympathy and help are needed 
where the purpose is weakest. The inventive child needs 
encouragement to aim at finishing his work in order to 
test the plan he has invented ; the craftsman child needs 
help in formulating an aim at the outset ; and the child 
of variable moods needs persuasion to persevere now and 
again, and above all needs safeguarding from interruption 
and discouragement on the rare occasions when some 
pursuit has taken more permanent hold on him. 



CHAPTER III 

THE MODIFICATION OF INSTINCT: 
MENTAL GROWTH 

In the last chapter we tried to show the connection be- 
tween the child's early instinctive impulses and his later 
purposive and voluntary actions. It now remains to con- 
sider more particularly the child's mental growth. It has 
already been pointed out that the two are in fact in- 
separable, when the child acts he also thinks and feels, 
and throughout his mental life these three factors : 
activity, thought, and feeling, are inseparably connected 
and are perpetually reacting upon one another. 

In the early stages of a child's life the things perceived 
and attended to are those which excite his instinctive 
impulses. The effect of the resulting activity is neces- 
sarily to make his perceptions clearer and more definite. 
His attention involves the use of all available senses in 
the further investigation of the object, and by handling 
and playing with it he learns to distinguish it more 
clearly from the surrounding objects and grows familiar 
with its properties. It will be found that the baby of 
a year old soon tires of handhng the object, say, a doll, 
unless it offers fresh possibiHties by being capable of 

46 



INSTINCT : MENTAL GROWTH 47 

gradual destruction, or unless he acquires the habit, as 
some children will, of carrying it about. His perception 
of it is clear up to the point he is capable of reaching and 
his curiosity is temporarily satisfied. But a few months 
later it is offered to him again, and now his knowledge of 
the human body has increased by attention to his own 
features and those of other people. He is now able to 
notice that the doll has eyes and mouth and legs, and he 
finds fresh scope for activity and interest in pointing out 
and naming these over and over again ; for the process 
of connecting percept with name affords intense delight 
to most young children. At this stage too, or a little 
later, he will begin to use the doll in definite play, give 
it milk to drink, hold a cake to its mouth, and so on. 
He has the idea of himself drinking milk and makes 
this more definite and general by using it in his games 
with the doll. Here again repetition will follow until 
the process is too familiar to interest him. Then it may 
either be dropped or more probably will develop into a 
more elaborate game of the same kind. In all this 
curiosity plays a large part, aided later by imitation. 
The game may be wholly spontaneous, except perhaps 
for the first suggestion that the doll should be given its 
* tea.' In the process the child gains, as we have said, 
clearer perceptions and a more readily available stock of 
ideas with regard to the daily activities which he repeats 
in his play. Meanwhile his activities have been going on 
in countless other directions. He sees flowers picked and 
asks for them and handles them, sees them put in water 
and afterwards repeats this for himself. One baby not 



48 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

quite two years old was observed picking daisies and 
putting them carefully into an empty can which he 
connected with water from having seen it used to water 
the plants. Another time he sees the cut flowers, daisies, 
made up into a chain and he thus gets an idea of divergent 
possibiHties in respect to them. Throughout his thought 
activities are connected with his instincts and with the 
interests arising out of them. 

Now from the nature of things these activities must 
be selective, just as all attention is selective. Hence all 
activity and the corresponding clearness of perception 
and increased stock of ideas implies a corresponding neglect 
of other activities and a corresponding absence of clear 
percepts and ideas in other directions. The young 
child's activities are so catholic that his interests appear 
to embrace the whole of his environment. But careful 
observation discovers the beginnings of the selective 
process. Some games are repeated day after day with or 
without assistance from his elders, others are apparently 
enjoyed once but the child never returns to them. As 
he grows older the selective process is more clearly 
marked, and as we have pointed out, helps to determine 
the modifications in the instinct of curiosity. This 
speciahsation of interest always means specialisation of 
knowledge. The child's percepts and ideas will be clearest 
along the lines of his more permanent interests owing to 
the manner in which these are built up, and he will be 
able to think and talk more readily about things connected 
with these interests. Hence he is in a position to learn 
more, to see more, and to understand more along these 



INSTINCT : MENTAL GROWTH 49 

lines, whilst in other directions he has only vague notions 
based on statements half understood and things inade- 
quately observed. " He that hath, to him shall be 
given " is certainly true o£ knowledge in any given direc- 
tion. 

. This view of mental growth marks an important dis- 
tinction between modern theory and the view of earlier 
educationalists. ■ We cannot now regard the child's mind 
as made up of various faculties, ' observation,' imagina- 
tion, memory, and so on, and trace his progress in these 
quite apart from the material on which he has exercised 
them. If a child is said to be ' observant ' we must know 
in what directions he has practised and developed his 
powers of observation, and in what other directions his 
interests have been weak. Then we may reasonably 
expect to find him observant where he has been interested 
and has acquired knowledge, and may equally reasonably 
fear to find him ' unobservant ' in other respects. The 
street boy is -observant in his own sphere but he will 
prove a poor guide in a country lane and may be a dull 
boy in school. Thus the modern theory disposes of the 
convenient educational notion of ' formal ' training, 
according to which the subjects to be taught in school 
might be selected each for their supposed value in training 
some faculty. Thus by teaching arithmetic to ensure 
accuracy, needlework for neatness, nature study for 
observation, literature for imagination, and so on, we 
might hope to turn out a child who was in general and 
for all purposes accurate, neat, observant, and imagina- 
tive. In actual fact we find the process of mental growth 

M.P. — 4 



50 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

to be specific in each case, and indeed to some extent 
special training in one subject may tend to prevent the 
exercise in other directions of the particular faculty we 
believed ourselves to be cultivating. The more absorbing 
the interest and the more effective therefore in stimulat- 
ing the activities of the child or adult, the less time and 
energy w^ill there be for other interests and the more 
closely will habits of thought and procedure be con- 
nected with the favourite pursuit. 

The cruder forms of this theory of formal training 
have long been abandoned, but it is unfortunate that its 
terminology still survives in some even recent books on 
education. Meanwhile the question of whether any 
transference of mental power acquired in one direction 
to other allied subjects is possible, and if so under what 
conditions and to what extent, is still a point of dispute 
among experimentalists. Here we need only remark 
that such transfer where it exists at all appears to be due 
to the cultivation of an intelligent attitude of mind 
which enables us to attack fresh matters more effectively. 
It is the * concept of method ' which is transferred, not 
any specific improvement in ' faculty.' 

The practical results of all this for the teacher would 
seem to be somewhat as follows : 

I. He must aim at providing stimulus and opportunity 
for the exercise of a number of instinctive activities and 
for the development of wide interests. Luckily the 
inter-connections of human knowledge are so numerous 
that the child readily passes from one already de- 
veloped interest to another. We have pointed out the 



INSTINCT : MENTAL GROWTH 51 

danger of neglecting to stimulate aims and activities 
connected with the social instincts, and these activities 
will assure the growth of social ideas and prepare the 
way to intelligent citizenship. But there is a further 
risk of being content with narrow opportunities and 
interests because the child is ' happy ' in the interests he 
already has. This is generally a greater danger in home 
education than at school, where a fairly wide curriculum 
is usually planned out and where ' narrowness ' is looked 
upon with suspicion. Many adults, however, find them- 
selves regretting that incipient tastes for, say, music or 
constructive work were neglected when they were 
children until the desire for such pursuits died away. 

Instinctive impulses are strong while they last, but 
many of them appear to be transitory. Thus adults 
and even children often lose all interest in constructive 
work owing to lack of opportunity and encouragement, 
and the keen curiosity of the normal child lapses into 
middle-aged apathy, or, even worse, into incessant 'gossip,' 
if it is not provided with proper stimulus. 

2. It is important to see that the child's interests and 
activities work progressively, and that he does not merely 
satisfy his instincts by a repetition which fails to produce 
effective mental growth. Children left to themselves 
sometimes prove inventive and progressive, but they 
may also stagnate for want of fresh ideas and repeat the 
same game or make the same pictures without getting 
any further. This danger has been pointed out by Dewey, 
and it is perhaps not one which teachers are, as a rule, 
likely to overlook. But they may blame the system of 



52 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

freedom in education for the stagnation because they 
confuse freedom in working out activities with freedom 
from fresh stimulus. On the other hand, it would be 
rash to assert that the child gets no benefit from this 
seemingly monotonous repetition of an activity, provided 
that it is genuinely interested. But children may fall 
into the habit of occupying themselves without using 
their full powers, and it is for the teacher to provide at 
least the stimulus to progress further. Suggestion, fresh 
material, observation of other children all serve a useful 
purpose in such cases. Moreover the teacher is respon- 
sible for providing material likely to lead the child in 
directions that are permanently useful. He may legiti- 
mately have in view at any given stage the child's later 
school life, just as the school as a whole must keep in 
view adult life after school. It is only in this way that 
he can help the child to secure those stocks of ideas and 
memories which will help to easy and rapid progress. 
Moreover, if he fail in this he will find the child lacking 
in that spontaneity of purpose which is most effective as 
a driving force. Much is often done at the Kinder- 
garten stage to encourage children to develop interests 
which will help them in such subjects as history, geo- 
graphy, and science, but the value of this is apt to be 
lost by formality and lack of spontaneity in later school 
methods. Thus the older child finds his former activities 
repressed or guided in directions which he only half 
understands and he rapidly becomes ' bored ' with school 
work. 

3. But perhaps the teacher's most difficult task is that 



INSTINCT : MENTAL GROWTH 53 

of helping the child to overcome the difficulties which 
he meets with in carrying out his aims. It has already 
been pointed out that spontaneous purpose provides the 
best incentive to this, but the teacher's aid is constantly 
needed. Indeed it is only by realising and acting on this 
that he can finally meet the contention that spon- 
taneity and freedom in education leads to selfishness 
and softness and makes a capricious and backboneless 
adult. 

We have already remarked that critics neglect the 
influence of the social instincts in humanising a child's 
aims and helping him to unselfishness. We may here 
add that they neglect the effects of habit and of the growth 
of the relatively permanent and dominant interests in 
overcoming intellectual and practical difficulties. More- 
over the instinct of self-respect makes children desirous 
of doing good work and willing to take pains to attain a 
higher standard if only it is set before them at a propitious 
moment. Every child should at times do what is tempor- 
arily distasteful to him but he should do it if possible 
at the bidding of some instinctive impulse or of some 
permanent interest which is strong enough to make him 
want to persevere. The end which demands the drudgery 
should be something which the child has set before him- 
self, not something forced upon him by others. Children, 
for instance, are apt to begin making Christmas presents 
and then to find the task of completing them somewhat 
irksome. At this stage they should make a decision either 
to give up the attempt altogether or to work hard, 
perhaps doing a certain amount each day, so as to finish 



54 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

the present in time. If they choose the latter alternative 
it remains for the teacher to give opportunities for the 
work and by encouragement and perhaps occasional help 
to see that the thing is done. Of course, too, it is im- 
portant to see that the work is really within the child's 
powers without undue hardship, and the more impatient 
and capricious children need at times to be limited in 
their ambitions or they will become disgusted with all 
such work. The following examples may serve to illus- 
trate what is meant. 

A rather * idle ' child of seven who disliked the few 
attempts she had made at sewing, and indeed was seldom 
fond of any form of steady careful work, yet spent 
some time for several days in sewing two pieces of stuff 
together to make a doll's blanket. Nor did she complain, 
although, in order that the sewing might be fairly secure, 
a certain standard of workmanship Vv^as required of her, 
which involved unpicking and starting again several 
times. When asked about the work afterwards she 
remarked : " I did not like doing it, but I wanted so 
much to finish it." It must be noted that the blanket 
was begun at the child's own request and that she was 
not Urged to finish it, but worked at it quite voluntarily 
and steadily, although she generally played over and 
seemed unable to attend to any bit of work enforced 
by others. 

The same spontaneity of effort must be sought in 
intellectual work, and can only be secured by following 
the lines of instinct and the gradually developing interests 
and by making them supply the driving force to carry 



INSTINCT : MENTAL GROWTH 55 

the child through the bit of drudgery. A child of six 
could write in large characters sufficiently easily to take 
pleasure in writing letters. Presently his imitative 
tendency and positive self-feeling made him wish to 
direct his envelope himself. It was explained to him 
that to do this he must both write smaller and take 
pains to write clearly and without crossing out, and that 
therefore he must write the address first correctly on a 
paper and then copy it on to the envelope. He agreed, 
but the effort of careful writing and copying proved too 
much for him and he decided to give it up and have the 
envelope addressed for him. After an interval, during 
which he wrote several letters, he was asked whether he 
would like to direct an envelope again. He assented 
eagerly, and this time, although the same careful procedure 
was followed, succeeded in completing the address satis- 
factorily. The drudgery of writing a thing twice and 
with great care, which he would almost certainly have 
resented had it been imposed upon him arbitrarily, fitted 
in with his general interest, and he saw the reason and 
necessity for it. 

In both the above cases it will be noticed that a cer- 
tain standard of work was demanded, for which however 
a reason was given which the child could readily under- 
stand and appreciate. There is indeed no reason why 
children should acquire a habit of doing slipshod work 
and scrambling through their tasks in an " Oh, it will 
do " style, when better things are really within their 
powers. On the other hand, it is important not to 
discourage and disgust them by setting a standard 



56 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

beyond their reach, or one which they see no object in 
attaining. 

4. It must be remembered that appeals to interest are 
always relative in value, not absolute. We attend spon- 
taneously to whatever has the highest interest value out 
of the possibilities before us. And the result necessarily 
varies both with our environment and with our own 
mental and physical condition. A book which engrosses 
us when in good health seems hopelessly dull after an 
illness ; and vice versa, the silly novel which amuses us 
during convalescence cannot hold our attention for five 
minutes when we are well. Moreover the environment 
may present many conflicting claims on our interest or 
only one that really appeals to us. The work which we 
enjoyed yesterday seems thoroughly distasteful to-day, 
when a friend urges us to go fishing with him. All this 
is plain enough to introspection, and it is evident that 
this variability of interest values is likely to be even 
greater in the case of children, since their dominant 
interests are less fixed and powerful and they have less 
experience in discounting the attractions of temporary 
excitements. It may be necessary therefore for the 
teacher to see that the relative value of the more per- 
manently useful interests is high, i.e. that the child 
is not unduly distracted by conflicting claims on his 
attention and by perpetual excitement. To let children 
follow out spontaneous interests and instincts need not 
mean subjecting them to a continual stimulus of exciting 
distractions and watching them jump from one to 
another like a puppy in a strange garden. Such continual 



INSTINCT : MENTAL GROWTH 57 

excitement tends to prevent the formation of the more 
permanent interests and leaves the child no time to get 
a real hold of the new ideas v^hich crowd in upon him. 
Observation of young children up to three or four years 
of age in a normal home environment suggests that the 
natural course of development is a period of excitement 
when new powers and new experiences seem to come 
upon the child with a rush, followed by a period of com- 
parative calm, during which he repeats and perfects 
the activities just discovered and becomes familiar with 
the new experiences. Then there is a fresh burst of 
growth and keen interest, followed by another calm, and 
so on. Possibly some sequence of this sort is the healthy 
form of growth throughout childhood. If so the teacher's 
function must be to give scope and opportunities to the 
child during the period of rapid growth by helping with 
material, with sympathy and with information as needed, 
but to be prepared for the lapse into a calm and perhaps 
half-bored state afterwards. During this period the child 
gets practice in working at things after the first keenness 
has worn off, and meanwhile he also gets valuable mental 
rest. It may be expected too that the child will need 
more help and companionship during this period, but to 
attempt to stimulate him continually up to the level of 
the active period is to risk over-pressure. 

5. It is useful to observe the child's behaviour when 
his interest is immediate, i.e. where his purpose is to 
obtain the pleasure arising out of the work for its own 
sake, and again when his interest is indirect and he does 
the work as a means to an end. The best results are 



58 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

probably secured where both forms of interest are present, 
then the end in view may serve to carry the child over 
the less directly pleasurable portions of the work. Of 
this we have already given examples. Children vary 
greatly however, both in their ability to work for an 
indirect end, — a matter which obviously depends partly 
on age, — and in their treatment of the means. In some 
cases eagerness to arrive at the desired result leads them 
to hurry over the intermediate stage and their work 
becomes slipshod and poor. 

6. The rejection of the theory of formal training has 
a positive as well as a negative side. On the one hand 
it obliges the teacher to look with suspicion on the in- 
clusion of any subject in the curriculum on the ground, 
or even partly on the ground, that it is * good training.' 
Each subject must be justified on its intrinsic merits. 
On the other hand, the school should provide specific 
training in most modes of activity which it is thought 
essential for the child to practise in later life. As regards 
* work,' this demand is fairly well met in many schools 
by supplying a wide general education, to be followed by 
specialisation in any particular direction selected. But 
it is usually acknowledged now that educatit)n should 
lead to intelligent use of leisure as well as to ability to 
work, and very few schools realise what is needed for this. 
Teachers still fail to recognise that the child requires 
actual practice in the spontaneous use of leisure. It is 
not enough to stimulate interest in various subjects — or 
even in various occupations — which are judged suitable 
for leisure employments or hobbies. Since these are done 



INSTINCT : MENTAL GROWTH 59 

under the direction of the teacher the child's attitude 
lacks spontaneity. He needs, in fact, actual practice in 
choosing occupations for his leisure time and employing 
himself on them. He needs practice in making his own 
plans and in learning what information and help he needs 
and where to go for them. Some homes provide such 
practice, but many have neither the space nor the 
necessary material, including probably tools or books ; 
or the knowledge and skill to give help and encourage- 
ment may be lacking. Opportunities of the desired kind 
are, it is true, provided in various schools for young 
children, and in some respects they are afforded by the 
Universities ; but between these stages there is a gap 
where little or nothing is attempted. Many boarding 
schools for boys and an increasing number for girls seem 
to think it essential to see that practically all spare time 
is * occupied,' more or less compulsorily, by games or 
other pursuits. But the element of compulsion takes 
away much of the value of these pursuits for the specific 
purpose here considered, however pleasurably the 
majority of the boys may be occupied. Day schools are 
apt to neglect the problem of leisure altogether. Thus 
for those whose education does not extend to the 
University stage there is no practice, at any rate after 
early childhood, in the distribution of time between 
various leisure pursuits, still less is any help given in 
learning the relation of these to work. Hence some 
people never play at all, while others never work unless 
they are obliged. Moreover, even those who do ' play ' 
fail to get the maximum of enjoyment and interest out 



6o BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

of it because they have such a limited notion of its pos- 
sibilities. And this not necessarily because they have 
not, while at school, been interested in and enjoyed doing 
a variety of things, but because these things have been 
marked off in their mind as * work.' They never spon- 
taneously occupied spare time with them at school and 
have had no practice in selecting an occupation to suit 
their health or mood, or in overcoming, by their own 
efforts, the initial difficulties of finding the materials, 
whether books, wood, tools, or paints needed for their 
purpose. In default of such specific practice few people 
have the initiative and energy to develop a ' hobby,' 
and those who do so are needlessly restricted in their 
choice by lack of knowledge or imagination. Every child 
should have practice in occupying himself pleasurably 
and intelligently, both in co-operation with others and 
by himself, and of occupying himself in ways that are 
neither harmful to himself nor objectionable to other 
people. 

The practical question remains as to how all this 
spontaneity and freedom is to be attained in a com- 
munity like the school, where there are many diversities 
of character and temperament and consequently many 
divergent aims and interests. The problem has already 
being partially solved, as we have said, in some of the 
best schools for young children. It is only beginning to 
be recognised as a problem in the later stages of school 
life. Possibly the solution here will be arrived at along 
somewhat similar lines. There will be a great reduction 
in the time given to class teaching in favour of individual 



INSTINCT : MENTAL GROWTH 6i 

work or co-operative work in small groups, and there will 
be much greater freedom o£ choice of occupation for the 
pupils themselves. Class teaching is seldom an intelligent 
method except for lessons of the story or narrative types, 
where it is waste of time to retell the tale to everyone, and 
where also there would be a loss in affect from lack of the 
stimulus of a group of sympathetic listeners — a stimulus 
which of course effects the teacher as well as the taught. 
There is room also for ' discussions,' but these generally 
arise naturally out of the work in hand and are more 
effective when the group discussing is a comparatively 
small one. There may also be room for ' demonstration ' 
when a number of boys are puzzled about a particular 
point and can be dealt with together. For the rest, 
individual or group work seems in general the more 
natural method, and these are, moreover, the ways in 
which boys will be expected to work later on when they 
have left school. 

Greater freedom and spontaneity need not, however, 
mean that specialisation should be allowed recklessly and 
that boys should, for example, freely give up mathematics 
to work at carpentry. It might however mean, and there 
is much in the study of children's interests to support 
this view, that boys should be allowed to ' block ' subjects 
to some extent, e.g. to do a good deal of history or 
carpentry while the interest in these subjects is keen, 
and then to do a good deal of something else. The 
chopping up of work into limited periods by a time- 
table is necessary enough under the system of class 
teaching where the criterion of fatigue and boredom 



62 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

must be that of the weakest pupil — but it can hardly be 
regarded as natural, nor indeed is it a -particularly good 
preparation for later life. Greater freedom might also 
mean some choice in the allotment of time — perhaps 
after a minimum standard in certain subjects had been 
attained — in addition to that practice in the use of 
leisure, whose importance we have emphasised. Schools 
should also provide opportunity in work hours for co- 
operation and for other activities connected with the 
social instincts which are at present only possible in 
games — a reform which might render superfluous the 
somewhat pathetic claim made for the public schools 
that at least * character ' is ' trained ' and ' developed ' 
on their playing fields. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE GROWTH OF HABITS AND 
SENTIMENTS 

Problems connected with the formation of habits have 
always claimed a large space in educational writings, and 
the discussion of them often ranges over a wdde field, in- 
cluding moral, intellectual and physical activities. The 
word habit itself is fortunately less ambiguous than many 
that are used in educational psychology ; it is applied to that 
large class of automatic or semi-automatic reactions which 
are learnt in the course of experience. Habits are thus 
distinguished on the one hand from instinctive reactions 
which are unlearnt, and on the other from voluntary or 
purposive actions which require at least a minimum of 
thought. The possibihty of forming habits at all rests 
on the fact that an action once done in a certain way in 
response to any given stimulus, tends, provided that its 
consequences were not unpleasant, to be repeated in 
that way the next time the same stimulus occurs. Habits 
grow up in various ways which deserve the teacher's 
consideration, since the formation of useful habits in his 
pupils is expected of him, and will indeed save him much 
trouble and friction. He also needs to know how far 

63 



64 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

these habits can be rehed upon when the pupil is placed 
in a somewhat different environment from that in which 
they were acquired. 

1. Habits are formed in close connection with instincts, 
and are often the direct outcome of instinctive reactions. 
The instinctive impulse is in many cases sufficiently 
indefinite to be capable of satisfaction in a variety of 
ways. What inclines the child to choose any one of 
these ways in the first instance is for the most part in- 
explicable, though careful observation may give us the 
key to the problem in individual cases. Once chosen, 
however, that particular reaction is more likely to be 
chosen again next time, and so on, until it becomes a 
habit. We have already discussed this point and need 
only mention it here for the sake of completeness. 

2. Habits are also formed as the result of purposive 
action by which we deliberately set ourselves to acquire 
a given facility or skill. In this case the process generally 
begins by a series of trials and errors until the successful 
act is performed more or less by chance ; after this 
error often occurs again, but the correct action happens 
more frequently and is more easily recognisable, and 
the process goes on for a longer or shorter period until 
finally all the wrong acts are omitted and the action 
becomes both correct and automatic. Such methods 
of learning are familiar enough in cycling, playing games, 
such as tennis or cricket, sawing, and so on. 

In other cases the right action is easily recognised from 
the first, but the learner is slow and uncertain in accom- 
plishing it, and practice is directed towards attaining 



GROWTH OF HABITS AND SENTIMENTS 65 

speed as well as accuracy. Hammering in nails, typing, 
shorthand writing, playing scales may serve to illustrate 
this second class. In all cases, since practice makes the 
process more automatic, the attention is gradually set 
free and can be turned to other things. Thus when 
learning to cycle we gradually become able to notice the 
scenery, talk to a friend, or even read a book, and in 
games of skill we grow able to watch the movements of 
our opponent. To play such a game as tennis well in- 
volves the acquirement of a whole number of automatic 
reactions, any series of which can be started off by the 
mere decision where to send the ball. Most players have 
certain special strokes which they are generally able to 
accomplish successfully, i.e. in which the automatism 
is fairly perfect, and one of the marks of the feebler 
player is his inability to check his favourite stroke even 
when in that particular case it is merely playing into the 
hands of his opponent. 

The facility with which any given skill can be acquired 
obviously depends largely on the development and con- 
trol of the muscles. Hence teachers need to give heed 
to physiological evidence as to the age when the various 
muscles can be safely exercised and to determine what 
and when to teach accordingly. Much time is wasted 
if the child begins too young even if no serious strain 
results, and on the other hand facility may be lost by 
beginning too late. As a rule, if a child appears unduly 
slow or stupid in acquiring any given dexterity he should 
give up the attempt for a time, even if the occupation 
is one generally suited to his age. 



66 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

Experimental investigation into the effect of practice 
on the process of acquiring some skill such as that of 
telegraphy or typing confirms what introspection leads 
us to expect, viz. that periods of good progress are fol- 
lowed by intervals of little or no improvement. Pro- 
gress, in fact, is usually rapid at the beginning, then there 
comes a ' plateau,' as it has been aptly termed, where 
continual practice seems to have no effect, then another 

* hill,' and so on, until the limits of the individual's skill 
in that particular direction, or of his perseverance, are 
reached. The same characteristics seem to mark progress 
in intellectual skills, such as learning a foreign language, 
and, incidentally, observation suggests that a baby's pro- 
gress in learning his native tongue is of much the same 
nature. It must be noted that practice during the 

* plateau ' periods is not wasted, but is rewarded by more 
rapid improvement when the next ' hill ' is reached. 

It follows from this that in the numerous cases where 
practice is demanded in school work the teacher should 
be^ on the look out for the * plateaus,' since it is at this 
stage that the child is likely to be discouraged, and to 
need more help or the stimulus of a varied treatment of 
the subject matter should this be possible. As long as 
rapid progress is being made the pleasures of success 
will be enough to carry most children along with but' 
little attention from the teacher. Older children, too, 
like adults, may be encouraged if they understand that 
unevenness of progress is normal and that hard work 
during the unprogressive stages will be effective in the 
end. 



GROWTH OF HABITS AND SENTIMENTS 67 

3. Again, habits may be formed deliberately by volun 
tary repetition of certain reactions in response to certain 
stimuli. Thus, invalids in particular, healthy people to 
some extent, deliberately form habits of getting up and 
going to bed at certain hours, of eating certain foods 
at certain times, of taking daily exercise, and so on. In 
these cases there is no special skill to acquire and the 
process of trial and error is unnecessary. The automatic 
result is secured by repeating the act deliberately at first 
until gradually the thing works of itself. Some people 
are, of course, more forgetful or less determined in form- 
ing the habit than others, and hence the process takes 
longer and may never be quite so successful. Moreover, 
if the desired habit be even slightly distasteful the re- 
action never becomes really automatic unless custom 
removes the f eehng of distaste. This explains why people 
who have got up at a certain hour for weeks or months 
may still not acquire a fixed habit of getting up at that 
time so that they do it without effort and as a matter of 
course. Repetition only leads to automatic reaction 
when the process is either indifferent or pleasurable. 

Many of the habits formed by children are conveniently 
classed under this head because they are the result of 
deliberate repetition. But in a large number of cases 
the purpose for which the habit is formed is not realised 
by the child at all but only by the elders who see that 
the action is dully performed. In this semi-mechanical 
way children may form habits of putting away their 
toys at bedtime, of brushing their hair, of having a cold 
bath, and of carrying out a hundred other minor matters 



68 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

of the daily routine. But the absence pi dehberate pur- 
pose on the child's part may lead the educator to fail 
unwittingly in his attempt to make the habit permanent. 
This point is sometimes overlooked and deserves further 
consideration. The habitual action is learnt in response 
to a certain stimulus so that the sequence of stimulus- 
reaction is established as more or less automatic. The 
difficulty in the case of children who appear to have 
formed good habits is to find exactly what stimulus is 
influencing them. A parent, for instance, who had 
trained a delicate child to rest every morning before 
dinner believed that the habit was fixed and that the 
necessary stimulus was merely a reminder that it was 
twelve o'clock. But when the child was left in charge 
of a friend for a few weeks during her parents' absence 
from home, it was found that she frequently refused to 
go to rest and, if persuaded to lie down, often got up 
afterwards and played about. In this case obviously the 
mother's authority had been the really effective stimulus, 
and the habit formed was that of obedience to her wish 
and not that of resting before dinner. Mistakes of this 
kind are constantly made by so-called * good disciplin- 
arians,' whether parents or teachers, who believe that 
the children under their care are acquiring good habits 
of various kinds, whereas in reality they have formed 
one habit only, that of unreasoned obedience to the dis- 
ciplinarian's will : their lack of general training shows 
itself in a'^depressing manner directly her influence is 
removed. 

In other cases the stimulus seems to include and to 



GROWTH OF HABITS AND SENTIMENTS 69 

depend for its efficiency upon a certain environment in 
connection with which the habit has been formed. Hence 
the particular stimulus with which it is desirable to con- 
nect the reaction proves quite inadequate by itself. A 
boy of seven who was accustomed at home to look after 
himself in such matters as changing his shoes, getting 
tidy for meals, and so on, lost most of these useful * habits' 
when he went away from home on a visit, kept on his 
wet and dirty shoes, came to dinner with hands unwashed 
or hair unbrushed, and in general required more reminders 
and attention in a couple of days than he needed at home 
in as many months. In this case the habits were con- 
nected too closely with his home surroundings, the place 
where he took off his shoes and the peg where he hung 
his coat, and with the normal routine of his home life. 

Cases such as these are frequent enough and mark a 
relative failure in training. We want the changing of 
shoes to depend on the fact that they are wet and dirty, 
not on the aspect of the hall or lobby where they are 
generally removed, just as we want good manners and 
considerate behaviour to be habitual throughout a child's 
life and not merely while he is in school. And the failure 
in training may show itself in another way. The child 
who has formed excellent habits in connection with the 
routine of home or school may be less able to cope with a 
change in his accustomed environment than the happy-go- 
lucky child who has been brought up under less orderly 
conditions. If anything happens to interrupt the usual 
course of events the * well-trained ' child may be abso- 
lutely at a loss, his habits have been formed too mechani- 



70 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

cally, and since he has never clearly understood the reasons 
for the various actions he has learned to do he cannot 
adjust his behaviour readily to different conditions. It is 
possible to train a child too well, if he has acquired his 
habits blindly, as most children tend to do, just as it is 
possible to feed him too carefully so that the least change 
of diet gives him a stomach-ache. 

4. Finally, habits are acquired inadvertently. Chance 
movements made once or twice became habitual. These 
inadvertent habits often form a sort of fringe round 
skills deliberately learnt and round habits acquired 
through purposive repetition. We adopt particular 
mannerisms when we hold a stick or cup, or ride a bicycle, 
or dress and undress, and we even assume a particular 
facial expression when we play some game. Bad habits, 
so called, fall for the most part into this class, though 
some are directly connected with instinctive impulses 
and belong to class (i). Children bite their nails, frown, 
make faces, fidget with the leaves of their books, scribble 
on paper or on their desks, all more or less automatically 
and unconsciously. Such habits are specially difficult 
to get rid of when, like some of those just mentioned, 
they do not interfere with the child's attention and 
interest, or with the majority of the usual school occupa- 
tions. A child can and does bite his nails while he is 
reading, or listening to a story, and even in the intervals 
of his play ; indeed whenever his fingers are not actually 
occupied with something else. 

Habits are useful and even necessary because they are 
automatic and thus free the mind from an obligation 



GROWTH OF HABITS AND SENTIMENTS 7i 

to consider each action afresh whenever occasion for it 
arises ; but this same automatism makes them harder to 
check or alter when they happen to be undesirable. In 
this respect they resemble instinctive activities, and there 
is the same objection to any attempt to cure them by 
making the reaction unpleasant after it has taken place. 
Each repetition of the sequence stimulus-reaction 
makes this sequence more fixed and automatic. Hence 
the important point is to prevent the reaction taking 
place, not to punish the child after it has occurred and 
after the sequence is rendered thereby slightly stronger. 
Moreover the automatic nature of the reaction prevents 
the child from readily stopping himself in time even when 
he knows punishment will follow. Thus to punish, 
after each attack of passion, a child who has acquired a 
habit of giving way to fits of temper may only serve to 
undermine his self-respect without hdping him to self- 
control. The better plan whenever possible is to attack 
* bad ' habits either by removing or guarding against the 
stimulus or to prevent the reaction by some strong 
counter impulse. We may illustrate -what is meant by 
reference to the habit of biting the nails. The stimulus 
to this seems to be a certain nervousness combined with 
unoccupied fingers. We may try to remove this stimulus 
on the one hand by special care of the child's general 
health, and on the other by keeping his hands occupied 
at moments when otherwise he is likely to bite his nails. 
In addition to this we may give some special inducement 
to make him wish to cure the habit. Many children 
have been cured of biting their nails by a present of a 



72 Searings of modern psychology 

manicure case, This not only provides fresh occupation 
for their fingers at odd moments but, more important 
still, arouses a pride and interest in the appearance of 
their nails which may prove a permanent safeguard. In 
nearly all cases of course the goodwill and co-operation of 
the child is important, the exception being where the 
habit may be made worse by self-consciousness. A shy, 
nervous child who is awkward and walks and holds him- 
self badly may be made worse by any discussion of the 
matter, however much he wishes to improve. The best 
treatment here would be practice in gymnastics and 
dancing, where he will learn better control of his move- 
ments and a better balance, and meanwhile the avoid- 
ance of all reference to his awkwardness* 

We must now pass on to consider a further and im- 
portant development of the law of habit in the forma- 
tion of what are called sentiments. A sentiment may be 
described as an habitual attitude of mind towards any 
object or group of objects or towards some abstract idea, 
which attitude grows up in the course of experience as 
the outcome of our instinctive activities and emotions 
and the general trend of our interests. A sentiment is in 
a sense compounded of a number of potential emotions 
and impulses, any one of which we may feel according 
to the circumstances in which we see or think of its object. 
Thus if we have the sentiment of love to any person, 
we not only desire to be with them but also we are likely 
to be angry with anyone who hurts them, afraid of any 
serious danger to them, and so on. Again, a patriotic 
person feels proud when he hears good of his country 



GROWTH OF HABITS AND SENTIMENTS 73 

and its inhabitants, shame when he believes it to be 
concerned in what is bad, anger and perhaps fear of 
those who attack it and gratitude towards those who 
benefit it. Other sentiments which are specially im- 
portant in the case of children are those of dislike or 
hatred, espirit de corps, the aesthetic sentiment, 
the self-regarding sentiment, and the moral senti- 
ment. 

Now these relatively permanent mental attitudes 
necessarily develop slowly, and in the case of children 
in particular their growth is closely connected with the 
child's activities. Very young children, for instance, 
though they express delight in the presence of their 
mother or nurse and grief when she goes away can hardly 
be said to possess more than the rudiments of a sentiment 
of love. Later on, as the result of impulses of affection 
expressed in various ways, their attitude becomes more 
defined and permanent ; they begin perhaps to show 
resentment towards anything that seems likely to hurt 
their mother and to make efforts to please her and to 
save her trouble, which show that there is an element of 
the protective emotion in their attitude towards her. 
The protective instinct indeed forms an important part 
of what we call the sentiment of love as distinct from the 
more passing emotion of love. This fact is a partial 
explanation of the strong sentiment of love which 
children often have towards their younger brothers and 
sisters, or towards their pets. Here the protective im- 
pulses are constantly aroused and satisfied by the stimulus 
to and performance of various acts of care and kindness, 



74 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

whereas in the case of elder brothers and sisters and 
parents there is comparatively little scope for the 
exercise of such impulses. 

The most effective way to help children to form senti- 
ments is thus to provide opportunities for the exercise 
of instinctive impulses in the required directions, a fact 
which has indeed long been recognised by teachers. To 
acquire such relatively permanent attitudes of mind is 
a necessary supplement to a training in good habits, and 
is the best corrective to those more mechanical forms 
of training which we criticised earlier in the chapter. 
The child's training to be really effective must be con- 
nected in his mind with some reason which he can under- 
stand and for which he learns to feel some sentiment of 
respect and appreciation. Without this the habit is 
unlikely to stand the test of time and changed conditions. 
The habit of neatness, for example, has been so con- 
tinually encouraged in and even forced upon children 
that were repetition alone enough there could hardly 
be any untidy man or woman left. The process fails 
because few children see any reason for tidiness beyond 
that of necessary obedience to authority, and have no 
sentiment in regard to the idea of tidiness unless one of 
distaste aroused by unwise insistence on irksome rules. 
In such a case the educator needs not merely to enforce 
rules, however necessary something of this may be, but 
to make sure himself exactly why such rules are necessary 
and to consider whether the child can appreciate his 
reason. The two most obvious reasons for tidiness seem 
to be consideration for others and aesthetic feeling. All 



GROWTH OF HABITS AND SENTIMENTS 75 

children can understand the former reason, and the social 
instincts supply the basis upon which may be built up a 
sentiment of goodwill towards their fellows which 
includes a dislike of anything that gives other people 
unnecessary trouble. Where the trouble saved is only 
that of the individual himself the matter is less important 
and the need for tidiness is probably best learnt, if learnt 
at all, by experience. 

Most children, too, can understand and appreciate the 
aesthetic reason for tidiness. But the aesthetic senti- 
ment, like other sentiments, develops best in connec- 
tion with the child's activities. It is in fact merely an 
habitual, attitude of mind towards the objects round us 
which prompts us to look at them critically and to enjoy 
and try to preserve those we judge to be beautiful and 
to dislike and try to remove or improve the others. In 
children it is encouraged best by letting them share in 
actual attempts to make their surroundings beautiful, 
allowing freedom for their own taste to develop, how- 
ever crude their judgments may seem. Hence it is easier 
for them to prefer to keep a room tidy if they also help 
to make it look beautiful by the growth and arrangement 
of flowers, the choice of pictures, and so on. The school 
tidiness, which often consists in putting away ugly books 
and papers in ugly desks in an ugly room, is but gloomy 
and ineffective training for anyone. If, however, the class 
has some voice in the selection of pictures out of the 
school stock, and in their position on the walls, and is 
allowed to share in the choice of distemper or paint 
whenever opportunity offers, there is likely to be some 



76 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

pride taken in the room and some pleasure felt in keeping 
it tidy. In one school, for example, it was found possible 
to use white paint throughout for the woodwork because 
the children's pride in its appearance was sufficient to 
make them avoid rubbing against it or marking it. 

The sentiment of kindness to animals again needs to 
be connected with the training in habits of consideration 
and care of animals. Nature study, with its handling of 
all sorts of creatures and its investigation of their life, 
does much in this direction, and the care of school and 
home pets does even more. Here, too, it is the attitude 
of mind that is needed, and that must be developed and 
strengthened by actual opportunities of expressing the 
protective and other suitable instincts. 

Habits which depend on special stimuli may, as we have 
pointed out, be lost completely after the child leaves 
school and rr^ay even be deliberately unlearnt if the 
atmosphere in which they were formed was uncongenial, 
but sentiments when once acquired are harder to efface. 
Many of us, indeed, retain certain sentiments which we 
acquired in childhood and at which we are now mildly 
amused even while we acknowledge their influence. 

In the natural course of development sentiments will 
grow up first in relation to individuals. Later they may 
be extended to include a class or group, as some children, 
for instance, pass from an interest in their baby brother 
to a sentiment of love towards babies in general. Finally, 
we may form sentiments towards abstract ideas and be- 
come lovers of humanity, or haters of oppression and 
injustice. It is evident that most children's sentiments 



GROWTH OF HABITS AND SENTIMENTS 77 

will be of the first class, and this fact is important in 
determining what special activities are likely best to 
develop any desired sentiment. A child who willingly 
shared his tea with a young crossing-sweeper would 
probably have advanced much further towards the 
sentiment of fellow-feeling and sympathy with those 
poorer than himself than if he had sent whole boxfuls 
of old toys to Dr. Barnado's Homes or the Waifs and 
Strays. And this not because the sacrifice in the second 
case is not a real one for many children but because they 
cannot realise the result of their action clearly enough. 
It is unfortunate that hygienic reasons often stand in 
the way of the more concrete acts of kindness, but some 
of these inay be possible without of course neglecting to 
send away the toys too. 

With the approach of adolescence there comes the pos- 
sibility of forming abstract sentiments, but the con- 
sideration of these may be deferred to a later chapter. 



CHAPTER V 
ENVIRONMENT AND SUGGESTION 

For the purposes of this chapter it will be convenient 
to use the word environment to denote all the external 
circumstances that surround and influence the child, 
whether at home or in school, but not any direct teaching 
or instruction he may receive. In the widest sense of 
course the word would include such direct teaching. It 
will also be convenient to distinguish suggestions con- 
veyed by the environment from those conveyed by the 
teacher. 

Modern theory has no claim to have discovered the 
importance of environment and many valuable sugges- 
tions on the subject are to be found in the earlier educa- 
tional writers. But it has nevertheless been neglected 
in schools and particularly in the primary schools, a fact 
explained in large measure by the history of these schools 
and by their eagerness to provide much-needed instruc- 
tion. Now, however, that we have recovered from our 
just amazement and delight that nearly every child in 
the country should have an opportunity of learning 
reading and writing, we are beginning to recognise the 
importance of providing a suitable environment as an 

78 



ENVIRONMENT AND SUGGESTION 79 

assistance to learning these and other things. Evidently, 
too, the influence of environment must be relied upon 
to a greater extent under modern theories of education 
than when schools were places where the child's chief 
duty was to " mind his book." At present, it is true, we 
have no adequate knowledge of what is due to environ- 
ment and training and what to inheritance. But even 
granting that the child's chief bent and tendencies are 
determined at birth by the differing strength of his 
instincts, by his temperament, and so on, it yet remains 
for the environment, aided by the suggestions and teach- 
ing of elders and contemporaries, to provide outlet for 
these tendencies. The natural strength of a tendency 
may determine whether or no it develop under adverse 
circumstances. Genius is popularly supposed to show 
itself under the most unfavourable conditions, but talent 
at least may be lost or damped by the absence of sympathy 
or the pressure of counter-suggestion. Even on this view 
then, where much is supposed due to inheritance, environ- 
ment yet plays an important part. If it cannot produce 
a tendency it can stimulate, strengthen, and direct it. 

On the other hand, it may be that environment is 
even more powerful. Many native tendencies (so called) 
may really owe their development to suggestions and 
opportunities which have guided instinctive impulses 
common to all normal children into these particular 
forms. The * imaginative ' child may owe his facility in 
make-believe games to an illness which prevented him 
from taking part in the constructive and inventive pur- 
suits which seem to fascinate his brother, and threw him 



8o BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

back to quiet games with dolls and tea-sets. This brother, 
too, may owe his keen interest in * making ' things not so 
much to the special vigour of his constructive instinct as 
to the fact that bricks and sand were his most readily 
accessible toys in early childhood and that his parents 
were genuinely interested in his constructions, whereas 
they felt, half unconsciously, that the imaginative games 
were ' silly.' The difficulty is to collect enough sufficiently 
careful observations and records of the origin and sub- 
sequent history of children's favourite games and occu- 
pations. Once even a slight interest is formed in any one 
direction the law of habit will, as we have seen, tend 
to increase it and make it permanent. Moreover, rela- 
tives and friends naturally encourage such developing 
tastes provided that they are harmless. 

More evidence is essential before either of these views 
can be definitely accepted, but in either case the in- 
fluence of environment is considerable and is well worth 
the teacher's consideration. It must consequently be 
part of the educator's business to study the child's 
environment critically and try to devise means of im- 
proving it where necessary. 

This point may be illustrated by examining the oppor- 
tunities afforded to a child's instinctive impulses in 
homes of different types. Take first a middle-class house- 
hold, fairly well-to-do but where no servant is kept. 
The father is at business all day and the child spends 
most of its time with its mother and shares her house- 
hold interests and activities, which it afterwards imitates 
in its play. There is a small garden where both parents 



ENVIRONMENT AND SUGGESTION 8i 

work and where there is a chicken-run. Here, too, the 
child ' helps ' and repeats the activities observed, in play 
or in its own little plot of ground. Such an environment 
provides a suitable. outlet for many of the activities of a 
young child. Household matters, the garden, and the 
chickens stimulate its curiosity and it has numerous 
models for imitative play of an intelligent kind. A 
sand-pit and bricks for building, and chalks for drawing, 
are easily provided in addition. The weak point is likely 
to be in respect to music and dancing and possibly in the 
supply of suitable picture-books and stories by which 
wider and less personal interests may be aroused. 

Schools for young children should be able to provide 
an environment of something of this nature without 
difficulty. The household duties may lose some reahty 
and become for the most part games with a doll's house. 
But better facilities for keeping pets, for an aquarium, 
and for more varied constructive work will partly com- 
pensate. Obviously music, games, and dancing can be 
much better provided for than in any but an exceptional 
home. 

In another home of similar social standing we may 
find that the parents have few or no interests which will 
usefully stimulate the instinctive tendencies of their 
children. The mother perhaps hurries over her house- 
hold work and discourages the child from helping her ; 
the garden is neglected, and there are no chickens or 
pets. The child's curiosity is chiefly stimulated by 
hearing ' gossip ' about his neighbours. The parents do 
not understand his need to make and do things, and he 



82 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

probably satisfies this by messing about with the water- 
taps or other people's belongings whenever he gets the 
chance. In this way he often does damage and grows 
accustomed to being scolded as a sequence to his most 
interesting games. A child under these conditions 
develops little intelligent interest in his surroundings, 
and is lucky if he acquires nothing worse than a love of 
mischief and a certain hardihood in braving punishment. 
Analogous mistakes are sometimes made even in schools 
for young children, where, as we have said, the provision 
of a suitable environment should be comparatively easy. 
As children get older more is demanded of their en- 
vironment. For one thing their constructive tendencies 
should become more definite and the sand-pit and brick- 
box are no longer adequate. Tools and material for wood- 
work are perhaps required or help in making dolls' clothes 
or in drawing a map of the neighbourhood. Then again 
the child's curiosity should take in ever-widening fields 
as well as deepen along the lines of his dominant 
interests, and should be satisfied both by personal in- 
vestigation whenever possible, and by reference to books. 
The difficulty is that his interests are becoming more 
specific and he needs specific material, whereas in earlier 
childhood a few adaptable toys satisfied his indefinite 
requirements. Some homes can still provide much of 
what is needed at this stage, but many fail because the 
interests they encourage are too one-sided. What the 
child seems to need now is not necessarily much direct 
teaching, but rather endless opportunities to ' do ' things, 
combined with material to enable him to * find out ' 



ENVIRONMENT AND SUGGESTION 83 

what he wants to know. Books to look at and someone 
who knows enough and is sympathetic enough to help 
him and tell him stories will provide stimulus in respect 
to literature, history, and geography. And walks, 
whether in town or country, with opportunities for dis- 
cussion, investigation and questions, will help to interest 
in Nature Study and the elements of science. Similarly 
the environment should provide some stimulus and outlet 
in the various other directions into which we wish to 
guide the child's interests. 

Unfortunately school environment is apt to fail com- 
pletely after the infant school or Kindergarten is passed. 
We have already criticised the neglect to stimulate and 
use the social instincts. But apart from this the school 
tends to rely too much on the direct efforts of the teacher 
instead of preparing the way by suggestive surroundings 
which give opportunities for development but still leave 
room for freedom of choice and individual initiative. 
The teacher is thus handicapped by the unstimulating 
character of the school environment. He has to begin 
his subjects as it were from the beginning and laboriously 
build up an interest, whereas under more natural con- 
ditions the children would have a hundred developing 
interests ready to his hand, and the only difficulty would 
be which to choose for his particular purpose. We have 
already described one of the ways in which a child may 
travel naturally from an interest in building and the 
arrangement of houses, to the making of maps and the 
arrangement of countries and geographical features and 
thence to a wider interest in geography. Other children 



84 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

will approach the subject in other ways. One child, for 
example, was inspired with keen interest in the map of 
Great Britain through an interest in motor-cars and their 
letters. Various methods of approach readily suggest 
themselves, and the child's environment may be pre- 
pared accordingly. Introspection and observation will 
suggest similar natural approaches to other school * sub- 
jects,' and attention to these preliminaries will repay 
the teacher both by an increased initiative and energy 
on the part of his pupils and also by their ready grasp of 
fresh ideas. 

We can here only point out a few of the ways in which 
school environment might be improved. Many evils 
are attributed to large classes in primary and in some 
secondary schools, but what is perhaps even more desir- 
able than a great reduction in the size of the classes is 
that each class should have two rooms at its disposal, the 
one for quiet work, reading and writing and most of the 
actual teaching, and the other for handwork and con- 
structive work of all kinds, and possibly for science. In 
this latter room bits of work could be left unfinished 
without being in the way, some noise would be allowable 
and free time could be pleasurably and intelligently 
occupied. Such a plan would make it easier to encourage 
group work and independent work of various kinds, the 
need for which we have already discussed. Then books 
of reference and books and pictures likely to interest 
children of various developing tastes should be readily 
accessible to be looked at in spare moments or in pursuit 
of some special interest. Children in bookish homes no 



ENVIRONMENT AND SUGGESTION 85 

doubt often learn to spend too much time in reading 
because the^ perhaps lack stimulus for their more active 
impulses. But at any rate they readily acquire a habit 
of referring to books for information ; yet teachers often 
fail to cultivate this habit in their pupils in school in 
spite of much expenditure of time and energy. In a 
case like this v^hile something may be attributed to 
inherited taste yet the difference in effort and result must 
be largely due to the total lack of stimulus in the school 
environment w^hich throws the entire burden upon the 
teacher's direct efforts. 

In some cases no doubt, and this especially in the 
primary schools, expense is a serious consideration, but 
even here something might be done if we could forgo 
such demands as that, for instance, every child in a class 
should be provided with a copy of the reading book so 
that fifty children may follow in their book while the 
fifty-first reads aloud. 

Environment in the sense in which we have used it is, 
however, not the whole of the matter. Direct teaching 
and suggestion are also needed. With the former we 
are not concerned here, but the word suggestion occupies 
a prominent place in some recent educational writings, 
and the idea embodied in it is sufficiently important to 
deserve further discussion. 

Suggestion, imitation, and sympathy have been called 
pseudo instincts because the tendencies denoted, although 
they appear to be innate, are not accompanied by any 
specific emotion such as we find in the case of instincts 
proper like fear or anger. The three terms are used 



86 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

variously even by psychologists, and the lines of distinc- 
tion between the three are difficult to draw in practice. 
Roughly, however, they may be taken to denote those 
tendencies in human beings which incline them respec- 
tively to take over thoughts and beliefs from their fellows, 
to copy their acts, and to feel what they appear to feel,— 
without any deliberate purpose and without any reasoned 
process of thought. Illustrations of these tendencies 
may readily be supplied. Children acquire accent, 
gesture, and manners from an imitation, wdiich is mainly 
unconscious, of those with whom they live. They also 
readily adopt the beliefs of their elders through sugges- 
tion, accepting them with an absence of criticism which 
justifies the phrase a " child-like faith." Similarly 
children readily develop * sympathetic ' fear if the person 
with whom they are shows signs of fright, although they 
may not know the cause. If the cause is known the case 
becomes one of suggestion and the child will adopt the 
suggested belief, say, that " all cows are dangerous " and 
may hold to it tenaciously in spite of much evidence to 
the contrary. It may be added that many specific fears 
often explained as ' instinctive ' are in fact probably 
acquired in childhood through suggestion and sympathy. 
Such are possibly fear of the dark, fear of touching 
creatures like worms and slugs, and almost certainly fear 
of animals, particularly of cows and dogs. Childhood 
might be a much happier period if people could refrain 
from inadvertent suggestion of danger and could also 
deny themselves the pleasure of witnessing the thrill 
caused by exciting stories of wild animals, hunting, rescue 



ENVIRONMENT AND SUGGESTION 87 

from fire and so on. The small child often delights in 
such stories at the time, but they leave him the victim 
of untold horrors v^hen he is left alone, and especially at 
night. Older children, v\^ho can better estimate the 
probability of danger, can enjoy stories of this kind v^dth- 
out so much risk that the suggestions conveyed w^ill cause 
them subsequent misery. 

We are here concerned primarily vv^ith suggestion, 
using the word to denote the process by w^hich an idea 
or proposition is conveyed from one person to another 
and is accepted without adequate logical grounds. We 
shall not attempt, however, to mark off the numerous 
cases where imitation and sympathy are also present. 

The suggested idea may be conveyed by words, ges- 
tures or looks, but the essential characteristic is that no 
attempt is made to offer a reason for believing it and 
that the recipient accepts it in the same spirit. The 
success of the process depends : (i) on the skill of pre- 
sentation ; (2) on the prestige and authority of the sug- 
gestor ; (3) on the state of mind of the recipient. Know- 
ledge of the subject concerning which the suggestion is 
made must generally be absent or at any rate not readily 
called to mind, otherwise a process of reasoning is hkely 
to be set up. Contrariant ideas too must be absent, or 
not sufficiently powerful to offer serious opposition to 
the suggested idea, otherwise it will either be rejected 
forthwith or the opposition may lead to a reasoned 
examination of the matter and to a more or less logical 
acceptance of one or the other. 

These conditions make it obvious that children, as a 



88 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

rule are specially suggestible. They accept suggested 
ideas without serious opposition and often regard them 
subsequently as their own. They also hold to them with 
a tenacity which they cannot justify and with an emo- 
tional tinge which is often effective in leading to action. 
These actions must be distinguished from those due to 
direct command, on the one hand, and from those due 
to reason on the other. With regard to the latter it 
should be noted that a child often thinks and acts 
reasonably although his conclusions are incorrect owing 
to inadequate knowledge and to his inexperience, which 
leads him to overlook the probable existence of unknown 
factors. 

In spite of their normal suggestibility, however, 
children, like most adults, display at times a tendency to 
contra-suggestibility, that is, a tendency to accept without 
reasonable grounds the opposite of any idea suggested 
to them. This may be due to an unusual amount of 
self-assertion, or in some cases to a kind of nervous 
irritability, probably due to physical causes, and which 
makes them equally inclined to resist commands or 
requests. Even in such cases both children and adults 
often accept the suggested idea ultimately though not at 
the moment when it is presented. It is also possible to 
make the suggestion with sufficient skill to avoid rousing 
the tendency to opposition. 

The important effects of suggestion in school can 
hardly be overlooked. For one thing much of the so- 
called tone of the school will on analysis be found to 
arise from suggestions conveyed with all the prestige of 



ENVIRONMENT AND SUGGESTION 89 

the elder and more prominent boys to the others. Good 
or bad tone sometimes spreads in this way from a specially 
influential group of boys until the effects are felt through- 
out the school. An extension of the process of suggestion 
is found in the prefect system as it is carried out, for 
instance, in many large boarding schools. The system 
works most effectively when the prefects are on friendly 
terms with the head master (or mistress) whom at the 
same time they respect, so that he can readily convey 
suggestions to them concerning government and be- 
haviour. The prefects in their turn must be themselves 
admired and liked by the majority of the other boys, or 
their prestige will be insufficient to make suggestion work 
smoothly and unconsciously, and friction is likely to 
result from their attempts to enforce their wishes. 

Suggestion too is the basis not only of the tone of the 
school so far as discipline is concerned, but also of the 
attitude of the boys towards work and games, of their 
interest in certain subjects, and their dislike for others, 
and of a hundred other matters which affect the general 
efficiency of the school. Some of these suggestions come 
from the masters, others from the boys themselves, but 
in all cases the process is an unreasoning one, and the boy 
who holds a reasoned opinion on any of the subjects in 
question is the exception. 

Now all this is in many respects good, and much of 
it is probably inevitable, but the process has obvious 
dangers, and these are apt to be greatest where suggestion 
seems most effective. And first the suggestion may be 
no suggestion at all but in reality a command, and the 



90 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

form of words may blind the teacher, and occasionally 
the onlooker, though usually not the child, to this fact. 
This is apt to happen in schools for young children where 
the influence of the teacher is great, and often indeed 
quite justifiably so. Suggestive questions as to occupa- 
tions, '* Would you not like to do this ? " " Would you 
not like to make so-and-so to illustrate the story ? " are 
naturally followed by a polite chorus of " Yes." But no 
child in the class has regarded the question as conveying 
anything but an order. Indeed the teacher herself has 
no alternative in view, because she is so used to her 
pupils' ready assent. In one such case where the children, 
less docile than usual, answered " No," the teacher feebly 
replied, " Oh, but I think we had better do it." 

Even when this particular mistake is avoided the use 
of suggestion to stimulate interest and to lead the child 
into special activities may easily be excessive. On the 
surface the results are often excellent, the child is un- 
conscious or barely conscious of control and he takes a 
keen interest in his lessons. The final effect, however, is 
to make him over-dependent on the teacher and unused 
to exercising his own judgment. He responds readily to 
the teacher's suggestion but is allowed no time to think 
out things and still less to react on his own initiative to 
the stimuli which should be present in every school 
environment. Still worse results sometimes occur when 
the teacher wishes to make the child think and reason. 
Thought by its very nature must work independently, 
and in children and even in adults the process is a slow 
one. Yet quite difiicult reasoning processes are some- 



ENVIRONMENT AND SUGGESTION 91 

times demanded of a class o£ children in the short space 
of a single lesson. It is small wonder that the eager 
teacher tries to hasten the process by subtle suggestion 
conveyed in questions, or by direction of observation, or 
merely by gesture. Thus he deceives himself into sup- 
posing that the pupils are really thinking and even in- 
venting. In reality the children are at best only following 
another's thoughts, and the more * skilful ' the teaching 
the more dependent do they become. The conclusion 
reached finally is that at which the teacher aimed and 
gives a correct solution of a problem only half under- 
stood by the class. Throughout such teaching the child's 
interest is mainly or wholly due to the teacher's influence. 
He will not occupy himself with the subject out of school, 
and he will not be able to work out similar bits of reason- 
ing by himself. Such over-suggestive lessons must be 
condemned as encouraging directly a slipshod tendency 
to accept other people's reasoning Vv^hich will later make 
the man an easy prey for the politician and the despair 
of the statesman. 

Legitimate suggestion is easily recognised by its 
results ; it takes hold of the child, as it were, and leads 
him without further attention from his teacher to follow 
out the subject for himself, and he will show by his activities 
and by his questions that he is following it out. And this 
result is due not to any magic skill in the way the idea is 
presented to the child, nor to the prestige of the suggestor, 
but to the mere fact that the suggestion stimulates 
instinctive tendencies or previously developed interests. 
Anyone who has had to do with children at home knows 



92 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

the difference between the suggestion which takes hold 
and keeps hold and the one which attracts for the moment 
or so long as the suggestor is present, but ultimately 
falls flat. Unfortunately in school the teacher's sugges- 
tions are too seldom allowed to fall flat, rather they are 
artificially kept alive by further stimulus. 

Something of this no doubt is due to bad conditions 
of teaching. The teacher too often works under con- 
ditions devised to suit the educational methods of fifty 
or a hundred years ago, whilst his own views of good 
method have completely changed. He works in class- 
rooms and with equipment suited only to demonstration 
and lecture lessons, while he aims at individual treatment. 
He often achieves much, but it is no wonder if sometimes 
his criteria of good teaching grow confused. Interest 
during the lesson and order maintained without friction 
are good in themselves, but they may nevertheless be 
arrived at by teaching that is definitely bad, and that 
will leave the child lacking in power to interest himself 
outside school and dependent on others to stimulate and 
guide his thoughts. 

Finally it is the educator's ambition to encourage 
reason and independent thought, yet in spite of this 
the majority of children leave school with a mass of 
ideas on politics, art, morals, and religion, which they 
have acquired by various processes of suggestion, about 
which they have never been expected to reason seriously, 
and criticism of which has been checked at the outset. 
We should laugh at a teacher who conveyed to his pupil 
by suggestion a belief in geometrical theorems or in 



ENVIRONMENT AND SUGGESTION 93 

Boyle's law. The very fact that differences of opinion 
are frequent in relation, say, to art and infrequent in 
relation to elementary mathematics and science should 
make us beware of dogmatism : yet it has an exactly 
opposite result. We are afraid to let the child strengthen 
and test the foundations of his beliefs in those very sub- 
jects where he is most Hkely to meet with opposition 
and contradiction in later Hf e. Thus the boy or girl 
goes out into life with no notion of how to form an 
intelligent opinion on any of these subjects and even 
with no notion that his own opinions are not based upon 
reason. Then he finds that opposed beliefs are held 
equally tenaciously by companions whom he respects. 
And if this happens during adolescence when reason- 
ing powers and critical tendencies, and often an un- 
reasoned opposition to early tradition are strong, a tragic 
day of reckoning may come. The more effectively the 
beliefs were inspired by early suggestion the more he 
will suffer in casting them off or modifying them, and the 
less unprejudiced he is likely to be in the process. Not 
infrequently the final result is a tenacious acceptance 
with equally little reason of opinions diametrically op- 
posed to those his teachers have so carefully inculcated. 

It is certainly a poor tribute to our own beliefs if we 
dare not present them except by blind suggestion. And 
if we justify ourselves by the reflection that the child's 
reasoning powers are so limited that his conclusions, if 
he is encouraged to independent thought, must gener- 
ally be false, we should remember that such false con- 
clusions can be readily corrected as he grows older and 



94 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

learns to reason better. The habit of accepting 
other people's opinions uncritically is easily learnt 
and hard to break, whereas independent thought will 
always be sufficiently repugnant to a social creature 
like man. 



Part II 

CHAPTER VI 

EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 

Experimental psychology is a comparatively recent 
development of psychological science and as such has 
been subjected to severe criticism, but the results already 
attained are fully able to justify it. Some of these 
results, such as those connected w^ith memory and 
association, are of direct importance in educational work 
and many others are indirectly suggestive, so that it is 
small wonder that experimental work carried out with 
children and often actually in the schools is a rapidly 
developing method of investigation. Experimental 
education has, in fact, become so important of late years 
and it looms so large in the eyes of the public that it is 
well to consider the exact nature of its claims and what 
may reasonably be hoped from it. 

In the first part of the book we have made a number 
of general statements about children, their instincts, 
their development, how interests grow and how purpose 
and control grow. These generalisations have been 
arrived at by psychologists partly by study of adults, 

95 



96 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

children, and animals ; partly by introspection, i.e. 
analysis of their own individual consciousness ; and partly 
as, for instance, in the case of animal instincts, by experi- 
ment. These and other similar generalisations constitute 
an attempt to describe and partially explain the common 
features underlying human nature as such, and in so far 
as they are correct, they enable us to infer how individual 
children are likely to behave under certain conditions— 
so long, that is, as we keep to broad lines and expect 
details to be determined by individual peculiarities. 
And it is this knowledge which supplies the basis of our 
educational theory. Now experimental education aims 
at supplementing and extending, or it may be correcting, 
the broad general theory by investigations with groups 
of children or with individual children, under certain 
carefully prescribed conditions, and by testing and ex- 
tending the results of these investigations by the aid of 
the mathematical and statistical sciences. 

To experiment means intentionally to alter or produce 
certain conditions in which the thing observed functions, 
in order to observe its procedure after the change. We 
often use the word in this broad sense. For instance, 
we say that a small child ' experiments ' when, after 
seeing milk given to the cat, he offers it the piece of grass 
with which he was pretending to feed his toy horse. 
And from one point of view all education is experimental, 
since teachers are continually altering their methods and 
watching the effects of the change upon different children. 
The teacher's attitude, however, can seldom be that of 
the scientific experimentalist. He works with a definite 



EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 97 

practical aim in view ; he wants, for example, to interest 
an inattentive child, and he tries throughout the lesson 
various ways of appeal until perhaps at last he succeeds 
and attention is secured. But his preoccupation with the 
practical aim leaves him little time to note data which 
are not directly concerned with the result, and the data 
he does gather may be so sketchy that he cannot explain 
exactly how that result was arrived at. He cannot say 
positively this happened under such and such conditions 
because of that other thing which I did or made the 
child do. He cannot even say whether the final atten- 
tiveness of the child was a cumulative result due to the 
combined effect of his successive appeals, or was caused 
by his final effort, or by something quite different, say, 
the removal of some distraction, which he had not noticed 
at all. Still less can he say that a similar method will be 
effective another time with a different child or under 
different circumstances. No doubt a teacher with wide 
experience who has formed a habit of criticising his 
methods may approximate more closely to scientific 
knowledge, but his statements must remain empirical, 
that is, he knows that his procedure has been successful 
in certain cases and unsuccessful in others, but he does 
not know enough of the conditions to make sure how 
far his successful methods would prove generally success- 
ful or what exact causal relation has been involved. 

Scientific experiment demands a more definite pro- 
cedure if we are to arrive at knowledge of cause and effect 
in the particular cases examined and to determine the 
possibility of basing trustworthy generalisations upon 



98 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

these results. We may now consider what are the 
characteristic features of such experimental work and 
how far these are present in experimental education. 

I. We must have adequate knowledge of all conditions 
present which are relevant to the particular point we 
are investigating. This is best secured by preparing the 
conditions, as far as possible, to suit our special purpose. 
And to do this we must be able to recognise and guard 
against probable disturbing factors. Thus if we wished 
to find out by experiment whether a group of children 
are more tired after a lesson on arithmetic or after one 
on gymnastics, we might arrange that the two test lessons 
should be given at the same time of day, that the previous 
work of the children that morning, and possibly the day 
before, was similar on each occasion, that the lessons 
were of equal length and given under like conditions as 
regards ventilation, temperature and general comfort. 
After thus ruling out certain probable causes of differ- 
ence apart from the effects of the subjects themselves, 
we should be more justified in supposing that any differ- 
ence of fatigue shown by the fatigue tests given after 
the lessons was partly or wholly due to the difference in 
subject. Moreover should it be necessary for different 
teachers to take the two lessons we should have to devise 
means for checking by some further test the effects of 
their differing personality and methods. Or we might 
adopt a different plan and test the children's fatigue both 
before and after each lesson, measuring the increase in 
each case. But unless the initial fatigue was approxi- 
mately the same in each case this would obviously be a 



EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 99 

less satisfactory plan, since the fatigue effects of a given 
subject may be expected to vary considerably according 
to the children's condition at the beginning of the lesson. 

Other sources of error will probably occur to the reader, 
but we need not give further illustrations. Clearly, 
however, any failure in the preliminary analysis of the 
possible disturbing factors, or in care in preparing the 
experiment so as to rule out or check the effects of these 
may lead to the fallacy of inferring that a merely acci- 
dental or irrelevant factor has actually produced the result 
observed. Thus in the above example we might con- 
ceivably ignore the fact that although the same teacher 
took both lessons yet she was so much more interested 
herself m, say, arithmetic than in gymnastics that her 
keenness infected her pupils, causing them to work much 
harder in the former lesson and to be proportionately 
more fatigued. In this case, of course, the excess of 
fatigue will really be a measure of the teacher's extra 
efficiency, and may not depend at all upon the difference 
in subject as such. 

A little reflection will show that completely adequate 
knowledge of the conditions can only be secured in the 
so-called exact sciences, where the phenomena studied 
can be isolated in the laboratory and be kept free from 
all irrelevant disturbing factors. Directly experiments 
deal with living beings the problem inevitably becomes 
more complex, and the more developed and delicate the 
organism the more difficult is it to analyse successfully 
all the conditions which may affect the results. There 
is no need to conclude from this, however, that any 



100 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

attempts at exact results are necessarily fruitless, as some 
writers are inclined to do. But the difficulty of the 
problem should be recognised. Repetition of experi- 
ments, under the same or slightly varied conditions, 
the testing of large numbers of cases in order to cancel 
individual peculiarities, comparison of results obtained 
by different experimenters and the use of mathematical 
devices for calculating and checking probable errors, all 
these and many other precautions can be used in experi- 
mental education according to the nature of the work. 
Above all, every result needs to be severely criticised and 
checked and every suggested source of error investigated, 
and until this has been done any conclusions inferred 
from it can only be regarded as working hypotheses, 
useful enough in many cases, but which yet require further 
confirmation. 

Analogous difficulties are found in experimental work 
in such a science as biology, but in one respect experi- 
mental psychology is peculiarly complicated. We are 
here not concerned only with external factors but also 
with the mental states of the individual himself, and 
these mental states can only be partially inferred by the 
experimenter from their outward expression in words or 
gestures. In experiment with adults introspective 
evidence is a valuable and indeed almost an indispensable 
aid, but children are necessarily both less skilful in the 
process of introspection and less able to describe their 
experiences accurately. Difficulties of this kind can be 
partially overcome in practice as the experimenter grows 
more experienced and learns to distinguish the cases where 



EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION loi 

the child's introspection is likely to be valuable. But 
on this account, amongst others, inexpert and amateur 
experiments are here speciajly unreliable. 

2. We need sufficient knowledge of the material upon 
which the experiment is made to know whether it can 
fairly be taken as a sample or as typical of other partially 
similar material. Here again, in dealing with living 
matter the exact similarity found in the physical sciences 
is unattainable. Hence the use of the words sample 
or type. The concept of sample is familiar enough in 
commerical usage to require no special explanation, and 
we use both it and ' typical ' in medical and sociological 
generalisations, as, for instance, when we assert that 
the death-rate in a slum district cannot fairly be taken as 
a sample of the death-rate of the whole town. Or, in 
other words, that the slum district is not typical of the 
town as a whole, though it may possibly be typical of 
slum districts in a number of other towns. 

The problem of determining how far, and in what 
exact respects, any group of children may be taken as a 
fair sample of other groups is perhaps one of the most 
difficult in experimental education. Yet obviously the 
value of any general conclusion that we seek to draw 
from our experiments will rest upon the degree of 
accuracy with which this problem is solved, and neglect 
to realise this is likely to be a fruitful source of fallacy. 
In the present state of our knowledge, for example, it is 
not too much to say that the results of experiments with 
children of a certain social standing can hardly ever be 
assumed true of children of even a slightly different 



102 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

standing, or of children of similar standing but different 
environment, who live, say, in a small county town, 
instead of in a city. In such cases if a general result is 
desired the experiments must be repeated under the 
different conditions which it is desired to include in the 
generalisation. Exceptions to this may be found in such 
cases as those of tests made in reference to rote memory, 
a semi-mechanical power whose functions are probably 
little affected by experience. In tests concerned with 
logical memory, on the. other hand, the different past 
experience of the children as affected by their different 
social standing would clearly be a relevant factor. 

3. Experiment must always be recognised as a part 
only of general educational science. We sometimes 
speak rather misleadingly of the * experimental ' sciences, 
as though in fact any science could depend for its data 
entirely upon experimental methods. Some sciences, it 
is true, owing to the nature of their material, can use 
experiment much more widely and effectively than others. 
But in all cases the procedure of investigation is a lengthy 
one, experiments only form one link in the chain, and 
their results, until they are connected up with" the general 
body of knowledge which forms the science, must remain 
empirical and of limited value. Roughly speaking, the 
procedure is somewhat as follows : We must first have 
preliminary knowledge obtained from observation, or 
perhaps from earlier experiments, or inferred from the 
general laws which we believe to apply in the case we 
are considering. This knowledge must be adequate to 
enable us to form a working hypothesis as to some causal 



EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION lo^ 

relation which we wish to investigate. Then follows a 
stage of careful reasoning. If this hypothesis be true 
certain results will follow in such and such cases. Do 
they follow in fact ? In some cases the hypothesis can 
be partially or even wholly tested by observation without 
experiment, or at least without any but the simple experi- 
ments in teaching to which we referred at the beginning 
of the chapter. And until lately educationalists rehed 
upon such tests entirely. But evidently in many, prob- 
ably in most cases, the difficulty of analysing the condi- 
tions present was too complicated to allow of results 
being obtained with much degree of certainty, and 
indeed the lack of agreement in educational practice is 
to some extent a witness to the uncertainty of these 
results. Moreover, in numerous other cases no adequate 
test could be obtained without devising some means to 
rule out disturbing factors by the arrangement of special 
conditions, which could not be secured in the ordinary 
course of school life. Hence the importance of experi- 
ment. The experimentalist starting from his working 
hypothesis devises conditions which will test its truth, 
and then proceeds to reproduce these conditions in 
actual fact and examine the results. In this way he can 
study the causal relation which he is investigating with 
a minimum of disturbing factors. And by repetition of 
the experiment in varied conditions he may be able to 
rule out these possibly disturbing factors altogether, or 
to estimate their effects with practical certainty. Even 
when this has been done the hypothesis needs further 
testing under different conditions. Meanwhile, should 



104 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

the conclusions provisionally arrived at have a direct 
bearing on actual school method, they can be further 
tested by putting the new method into practice and 
determining whether its effects are what were expected 
or whether there are variations which need explanation. 
Further, deductions from the provisional conclusions 
may help to explain facts not directly connected with 
the experiments hitherto tried, and in this case fresh 
experiments will probably be desirable as an additional 
test. 

We may illustrate this procedure by reference to the 
teaching of reading. The old method of teaching 
reading by learning first the names of the letters and then 
combining them into words of two and three letters, 
and so on, was obviously the result of a consideration of 
how adults spell words rather than how they read them. 
A closer study of the psychology of reading led to a 
recognition of two facts. First, that adults who read 
fluently do not analyse the words into letters at all, and 
that in rapid reading the sentence or phrase is the unit 
rather than the word. Second, that as letters are sounded 
in certain ways quite distinct from their names, and the 
spelling of words is based upon these sounds, reading 
can be approached more intelligently by learning the 
sounds of the letters rather than their names, and build- 
ing up the words from these sounds. These two con- 
clusions led each to a new method of teaching reading, 
the ' Look-and-Say ' method and the phonetic method 
respectively. The phonetic method is necessarily com- 
plicated in a language like English, where only a proportion, 



EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 105 

though a fairly large proportion, of the words in common 
use are spelled phonetically, and where some of the letters 
represent several different sounds. Nevertheless, its 
advocates claimed that the gain in intelligence was more 
than proportionate to the loss due to these irregularities, 
and various devices were introduced which aimed at 
lessening the difficulties. Of these the Dale system is the 
best known and the most carefully worked out. 

At this stage, then, we have two opposed groups of 
theorists each asserting that their method was the best. 
The only test of these claims was the results obtained in 
the different schools where the methods were used. 
From these, as might be expected, no final decision could 
be arrived at. Some teachers preferred one method, 
others another ; many used a combination of both. 
Moreover, many children learnt to read well in most of 
the schools in spite of the variation of method, as indeed 
they had managed to do even under the old alphabetic 
system. Clearly, then, the method of learning to read 
was only one amongst many factors which influenced 
the progress of the children and experiment was the 
only means of deciding the conflicting claims of the 
different methods. Some interesting experimental work 
has already been done in connection with this problem, 
and possibly a decisive conclusion may shortly be arrived 
at. For the purposes of this illustration, however, we need 
only point out some of the conditions necessary in order 
to experiment and some of the difficulties that arise. 

In this case there are two working hypotheses put 
forward, and the problem is to find an experiment which 



io6 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

will decide between the two. At first sight the simplest 
plan appears to be to take two groups of children, living 
under similar conditions and who have not begun to 
learn reading, and to teach one group hy one method 
and the second by the other method. Difficulties would 
probably arise in selecting groups of approximately equal 
ability with reference to a literary subject like reading, 
when owing to the conditions of the experiment it is 
agreed that they shall have done no previous work of 
this kind. Such difficulties might, however, be practically 
overcome by duplicating or triplicating the experiment. 
A much more serious source of error is the length of 
time over which such an experiment must extend before 
any decisive result can be attained, because conceivably 
one method might be more successful during the first 
few weeks, whilst the other ultimately proved the best. 
During a period of time extending beyond a few weeks 
obviously many other irrelevant factors are likely to 
appear which will influence the result and whose effect 
can hardly be checked. Hence it might prove advisable 
either to abandon this form of experiment or to supple- 
ment it by others extending over much shorter periods. 
These experiments might be made with children who had 
already begun to learn reading, so that they could readily 
be divided into groups of approximately equal ability 
with respect to that subject. The method now generally 
followed in making such a division deserves a brief de- 
scription. A test in reading (or whatever subject is being 
used for the experiment) is given to the whole group of 
children. The children are classified in order of merit 



EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 107 

and arranged in three groups, A, B, and C ; the first 
child on the Hst being placed in A, the second in B, the 
third and fourth in C, the fifth in B, the sixth and seventh 
in A, and so on, till the Hst is exhausted. This prehminary 
test may of course be repeated two or more times to 
ensure greater accuracy. The three groups could then 
be treated as follows : A taught by the Look-and-Say 
method for a given number of lessons, B taught by the 
phonetic method for a like number of lessons under as 
nearly as possible similar conditions, C given no reading 
lessons at all. This third or control group is needed to 
check the amount of progress, if any, which results from 
natural development and general school work. Finally, 
the three groups should be tested again and the results 
compared. Tw^o difiiculties are, however, at once ap- 
parent. In the first place, previous methods of learning 
may affect the final result. If, for example, these methods 
have been chiefly phonetic the progress made hy^ group 
B may be partly due to familiarity with that type of 
teaching. This difiiculty could be avoided by using six 
groups of children, three previously taught phonetically, 
and three by the Look-and-Say method. A more com- 
plicated question is what exactly we can test accurately 
in reference to a subject like reading. Good reading 
includes technical ability to read the words, fluency, in- 
telligence in phrasing and understanding of the subject 
matter. Of these only the first readily lends itself to 
accurate numerical marking, and this would probably 
be all that could be tested in an experiment such as this. 
But in granting this we open up a variety of problems 



io8 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

for further investigation. The Look-and-Say method, 
for instance, may teach children to read, as adults do, 
with continual reterence to the context and to the mean 
ing of what they are reading, whereas children taught 
phonetically may dwell too much on each word and fail 
to get the general sense. If this were so the latter might 
progress more rapidly in technical skill and yet might 
read less intelligently than the former. Hence the 
result of the experiment could only be stated in terms 
of technical progress and could not be regarded as deter- 
mining which was all round the best method. For this 
yet further investigation would be needed. Moreover, 
in the experiment as described, we have entirely neglected 
the relation of reading to writing, and it would remain 
an open question whether the method found best for 
reading in itself were also the best when reading and 
writing are taught together or in close connection. 
Nor again would it necessarily be the best for children 
whose interests lead them to learn to write first, though 
this is probably not unusual where the pupils are allowed 
to follow their inclinations in the matter and are not 
bound by school tradition. 

4. In all experimental work in education the assist- 
ance given by mathematical and statistical science is 
invaluable. The determination of the probable reliability 
of the results and the grouping of data so as, on the one 
hand, to avoid suggesting unwarranted inferences, and 
on the other, to secure that the information shall be put 
in its most useful and convenient form, are an essential 
part of the experiment. Moreover, experiments must be 



EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 109 

devised so that exact results can be expected. The vague 
work of classifying data which is merely subjective, i.e. 
data to which competent observers may readily give 
different values and for which there is no objective 
standard, may be suggestive but can seldom or never 
yield reliable results. We have already pointed out some 
of the difficulties of devising suitable tests for reading, 
and in most other experimental work similar difficulties 
arise. A composition, for instance, can be accurately 
marked for the number of words wrongly spelled or for 
the number of mistakes in grammar, but some of the 
mistakes may be much less serious than others, and yet 
it is difficult to find an objective standard for measuring 
this. The estimation of style is still more difficult, 
although it is clear that classification by words — excellent, 
good, fair, and so on — is merely a subjective standard, and 
that there will be serious risk of error on the marginal 
cases. In many cases indeed several preliminary experi- 
ments will be necessary in order to show exactly 
where failure in the accuracy of the methods used 
is likely to occur and also to show what exactly it 
is possible to test by experiment if accurate results are 
desired. 

The knowledge of statistical methods required both to 
conduct experimental work successfully and to criticise 
it is indeed still a pitfall to the amateur experimenter 
and critic. Even such words as ' average,' ' median,' 
* percentage,' are sources of confusion, and some in- 
clusion of the elements of statistical science in the recog- 
nised school training in mathematics is much to be 



no BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

desired in view of the growing importance of the subject 
in this and many other connections. 

One other point of interest in connection with ex- 
perimental psychology and its applications to education 
is its value as an introduction to the study of general 
psychology. The working of simple experiments, many 
of which can be carried out without special apparatus, 
provides excellent practice for the student in the analysis 
of mental function. And, where the experiments can 
be worked by a class, the differences in individual results 
are often specially suggestive. Such introductory work 
appeals to many students to whom a book on theory would 
seem dull and perhaps incomprehensible, and after the 
conclusion of the experiments they will be ready to 
work back to the theoretical side along lines of interest 
and understanding already aroused. For teachers 
especially such work is of extreme value in view of the 
constant discussion of experimental work in schools. 
Some knowledge of actual practical work is the best 
safeguard against over-credulity in accepting half-proved 
results, and against rashness in attempting experiment 
with inadequate knowledge of method. Experiments in 
school may, of course, be valuable in addition to such 
class study if it be clearly recognised that the results 
obtained by unpractised experimentalists are seldom of 
value in themselves. 



CHAPTER VII 

SPECIAL STUDIES IN CONNECTION 
WITH MEMORY 

The concept ' memory ' has undergone as many changes 
recently as perhaps any other used in psychology. The 
word itself has survived, like many useful terms, from a 
time when much that we now know to be complex was 
believed to be simple, and when memory was under- 
stood as that faculty of retaining and recalling the past 
which in some people was ' good,' and in others * bad.' 
Few writers now dare to use the word in the singular 
without hastening to explain that they mean not 
' memory ' but ' memories,' and that they are well 
aware that such a statement as " John has a good memory " 
is meaningless unless we say to which of John's memories 
in particular we refer. Thus we must distinguish 
rational or logical memory from rote memory, visual 
memory from auditory memory and from all the other 
memories connected with the specific senses. In addition 
we have a memory of one type connected with one sub- 
ject in which perhaps we are interested, whilst in other 
subjects our methods of recall are different and perhaps 
less effective. Finally, we can speak of specific memories 

III 



112 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

connected with different kinds of objects, the concrete, 
the abstract, numbers, colours, shapes, and so on. 

It is a fact well known to teachers that children's 
memory power varies according to the subject matter 
they are trying to recall, and the same point can easily 
be verified by introspection. Each person, whether 
child or adult, usually remembers best the things in 
which he is most interested. For one thing he tends 
often to think of these things, so that his knowledge is 
frequently recalled and thought over, and thus becomes 
more readily available. Again, his interest leads to the 
formation of fresh associations, so that the possible links 
of recall are increased and his command of the subject 
becomes greater. The processes of observation of fresh 
matter and of recall of what was previously known both 
work most readily along the lines of interest. Hence 
that specialisation of attention and interest which we 
have already discussed leads- also to a specialised memory 
which is likely to be relatively effective, whereas often 
the memory for subjects outside the individual's dominant 
interests will be proportionately poor. A ' good ' memory 
as a rule means good in respect to the person's chief 
interest, or perhaps his work, where the power naturally 
attracts most attention, whilst the weakness or in- 
accuracy of memory in other directions is apt to be 
overlooked. 

Selective attention, which depends largely on the ideas 
already existing in the child's mind, and his consequent 
power of understanding new facts presented to him, 
determines what exactly is retained out of the numerous 



SPECIAL STUDIES : MEMORY 113 

possibilities offered to him. Teachers occasionally com- 
plain, in reference to such a subject as history for in- 
stance, that the children remember the minor personal 
details and little stories by means of which they fondly 
beHeved that they had made the lesson so interesting 
that all the important facts must necessarily be retained. 
But such disappointing results are inevitable where the 

* facts ' are so uninteresting to the child or so badly 
presented as to require such a garnish to make them 

* go down.' The child naturally remembers that part 
of the lesson which appeals to his existing interests and 
is suited to his stage of development. If his mental 
content is such that the story of the cakes, for example, 
is within his grasp, whereas Alfred's struggle with the 
Danes is not, he will remember the former and forget, 
or rather never really apprehend, the latter. Nor can 
the teacher avoid the difficulty by leaving out the cakes 
and confining himself to the Danes, for then he may 
find that most of his class remember nothing at all, or 
remember in such a confused way that they had better 
have forgotten. Such difficulties arise from a bad 
selection of subject matter, perhaps in this case owing to 
undue reverence for a text-book type of fact. Of such 
facts some teachers unfortunately still feel that all 
children must learn a certain minimum, to ensure which 
they begin teaching them when the child is too young 
and when they are unsuited to his existing interests. 
The teacher may be partly comforted for the child's 
forgetfulness by the reflection that no historical fact is 
important enough to children to be worth a coating of 

M.P. 8 



114 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

irrelevant matter to secure its retention, and may rest 
assured that the child is better for the present with 
Alfred and the cakes as one of his many stories, or even 
better still without Alfred at all. To some extent, indeed, 
what a child readily remembers is a test of what he is 
fit to be taught or to be allowed to learn. Many children 
are capable of an intelligent interest in history at an age 
when others can only remember the garnish of tales : 
many more can be easily stimulated to interest in social 
life and in, say, the more exciting battles. The rest 
should be allowed to remain at the story stage for a time 
so far as history is concerned. 

Not only, however, does the power of memory vary 
according to the subject matter to be recalled, but 
memories also vary in type. These types or methods 
of recall are connected with mental imagery. As objects 
present themselves to us they stimulate various sense 
organs. When we see a flower, for instance, we may also 
smell and touch it and our recollection of it may be in 
the form of a visual image of the appearance of the 
flower, of an image of its smell, or of an image of its 
feel, or we may be able to recall it by all three images. 
In other cases we may have an image of a taste, an 
auditory image of a sound, a kinaesthetic image of the 
muscular sensations involved in making a certain move- 
ment, and so on. Most people seem to have one type of 
imagery which they use more readily and frequently 
than others, but they can often produce other types 
when they make any effort to do so, and may also pass 
from one type to another without eifort, according to 



SPECIAL STUDIES : MEMORY 115 

changes in the subject matter they are trying to recall. 
Thus a person who relies mainly on visual or auditory 
imagery in repeating an English poem silently will at 
once use kinaesthetic imagery in changing to a French 
or German one. In this case, no doubt, the extra care 
and attention given to pronouncing the foreign sounds 
when the poem was learnt have caused the memory of 
the muscular sensations to be retained here, whilst it is 
lost in the case of the English poem. 

Moreover, a person whose imagery is weak in certain 
directions can apparently improve it by practice, i.e. by 
conscious efforts to recall objects in that particular way. 
Hence any attempt to classify people according to the 
type of imagery they most readily employ is apt to be 
misleading. Again, it is doubtful whether any general 
statement, such as that abstract thinkers have not as a 
rule much power of visual imagery, is legitimate at 
present. 

Imagery of all the types varies widely in vividness and 
accuracy in different individuals. Visual images, for 
instance, vary from a clear, detailed and properly coloured 
picture to a blurred greyish one. It is the same with 
imagery connected with the other senses. Some in- 
dividuals, for instance, have complex auditory images of, 
say, orchestral music, in which the different instruments 
can be distinguished ; others cannot even image a simple 
tune or phrase. In fact study of the subject has revealed 
a multitude of unsuspected individual differences in the 
kind and quality of imagery, unsuspected because every- 
one naturally supposes that his own type of imagery is 



Ii6 BEARINGS OF MODERN- PSYCHOLOGY 

the normal one until he discusses the subject with other 
people. Even after such discussion it is difficult for 
anyone who, say, habitually employs visual imagery to 
imagine what thought may be like without this accom- 
paniment, though he must perforce believe in its exist- 
ence. 

It remains, then, to consider some of the uses of these 
memory images. In some cases, of course, the image 
is itself what we want to recall and its vividness and 
accuracy measures the effectiveness of that particular 
memory. Thus auditory or kinaesthetic imagery seems 
essential to the recall of a tune, and both usually play an 
important part in remembering words in a foreign 
language. The modern reliance on phonetics in language 
training is the outcome of a recognition of the value of 
kinaesthetic memory in enabling us to reproduce sounds. 
Even quite young children can be interested in the 
position of their lips and tongues when speaking, and 
can be helped to correct pronunciation through this 
interest. 

Visual memory also has obvious uses. Some people 
can picture whole pages of a book or of lecture notes, 
and can thus practically read off what they wish to recall. 
Others habitually make a visual image map of their town 
or district, and can readily find their way about in streets 
which are themselves unfamiliar by the help of known 
positions fixed on this map. Others make use of images 
of geometrical figures or of numbers in solving problems, 
and children of mathematical tastes sometimes use this 
facility to occupy themselves when they are bored with 



SPECIAL STUDIES : MEMORY 117 

lying awake at night. Others again can image more or less 
definite charts of historical events by the help of which 
they readily place any given event in its proper setting. 
Even vague imagery of various kinds may be valuable, 
and teachers should be on the look out to encourage all 
available forms. But it is important to remember that 
some of the most serviceable images, according to intro- 
spective evidence, are not reproductive of anything 
actually seen, but constructive, i.e. made up out of 
combinations of known elements. Thus in the case of 
one observer the visual image map referred to. above 
consists, in regard to London, of a series of vague images 
of the appearance of certain well-known streets placed 
roughly in position somi.ething after the fashion of an 
old pictorial map, with blurs in between for the less 
familiar or less striking streets. In this case the appear- 
ance of the streets is of course reproduced, but their 
arrangement in position, so as to give a kind of bird's-eye 
view, is constructive. This image never appears as a 
whole, including all a known portion of the town, but 
only in sections ; the relative position of these is, how- 
ever, generally remembered, and considerable discomfort 
is felt in unfamiliar districts until the visual ' map ' can 
be mentally constructed and placed in correct position 
in reference to something already known. It may be 
noted that visual images of the street map habitually 
used are seldom obtained, and are in any case too vague 
to be of much use. A teacher could hardly help directly 
in the formation of imagery of this kind, whose practical 
value is nevertheless obvious. 



ii8 BEARINGS OF MODERN. PSYCHOLOGY 

Imaged history charts are apparently apt to bear the 
same individual constructive character, and are often 
not reproductions of any chart actually seen. Whether 
the use of a v^all history chart in school would help or 
hinder the formation of such individual types of imagery 
is at present doubtful, but it is probable that many 
children who can form no imaged chart for themselves 
will be able to reproduce the one frequently used and to 
adapt it to their own purposes. 

Various interesting points concerning the develop- 
ment and value of mental imagery await further in- 
vestigation, but for the present it seems reasonable to 
conclude that the class teacher should seek help from all 
suitable types as opportunity offers. Children should be 
encouraged to see, hear, touch and do, whenever possible, 
so that they may not have to depend on one type of 
image alone. The muscular activity of * doing ' is 
especially valuable not only because of the possible value 
of the kinaesthetic imagery thus obtained, but because 
it generally demands more prolonged and careful atten- 
tion on the part of the child and may thus help other 
forms of memory as well. This is the case, for instance, 
when a child writes a word in addition to seeing it 
written or spelling it aloud. 

So far we have considered only those memory images 
which serve a definite purpose, but thought processes are 
usually accompanied by much imagery, which is more or 
less irrelevant and may even hinder the formation of 
clear ideas. This imagery is often due to associations 
formed when the particular fact or event of which we 



SPECIAL STUDIES : MEMORY 119 

are thinking was first presented to us, or which have 
grown up by constant or specially vivid presentation of 
an object in a particular form. The words Justice, 
Love, are apt to call up in the minds of visualisers the 
images of a draped, blindfolded figure holding scales 
. and of a naked boy with wings ; images evidently due 
to familiarity with certain pictures. These associated 
memory images may sometimes give a misleading or 
ludicrous colour to the thought, as often happens in 
the case of imagery connected with hymns which we 
learnt in childhood and only half understood. Often 
they are merely irrelevant, occasionally they are sugges- 
tive, or again they may prove an insurmountable obstacle 
to the formation of new constructive images in connec- 
tion with the subject. One observer, for instance, states 
that she is often hindered in constructing images of 
scenery described in a book by the persistence of a mental 
image of the map of the country referred to. Something 
of this sort happens when we try to recall a certain tune 
and find ourselves always lapsing into another which 
contains a similar phrase. For a like reason many people 
object to reading an illustrated novel because the pic- 
tures when once seen persist in memory and prevent 
them from constructing their own images of the char- 
acters and scenes. Teachers need to be prepared for this 
more or less irrelevant imagery in children, since it often 
lends an unexpected colour to the subject matter of the 
lesson. 

More important for teaching purposes, however, is 
the part played by the child's stock of memory images 



120 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

in forming new constructive imagery of things described 
or read about. This stock can be usefully increased by 
letting the children see good pictures, just as it may be 
spoiled by familiarity with poor ones, and its possession 
may considerably enhance their powers of literary ap- 
preciation, their understanding of books of travel, their 
enjoyment of history, and so on. Frequent demands 
are made in school on this ability to construct images, 
and teachers are apt to over-estimate what children can 
do in this respect, because they forget that all such 
imagery must be based on past experience. The child 
must have in his memory the ingredients, as it were, of 
the picture he is to make up in order that the description 
may enable him to group these together. And it is well 
to remember that if the child is interested, which we 
may presuppose, he will not be beaten by lack of suit- 
able ingredients but will construct some sort of image, 
the misleading nature of which may never be discovered 
unless his confusion leads him to make some absurd 
mistake. For the most part children attach more mean- 
ing to a description if it is connected with and essential 
to some action. Indeed even adults generally get a 
better idea of a country from reading an interesting book 
of travel than from a descriptive geography. The time 
taken to cross a forest, the exhaustion after an hour's 
walk in soft snow, the rescue of sledge dogs from a crevasse 
all give at least a fairly correct working notion of the 
things described, and of their effect on practical problems. 
Good constructive pictures, based on description as such, 
are formed with difficulty even by adults who habitually 



SPECIAL STUDIES : MEMORY 121 

visualise, but descriptions connected with action are 
readily appreciated even where visual imagery is weak. 

Apart from the recognition of different types of 
memory image, experimental work has led to much 
interesting analysis of the functioning of memories. In 
the first place, we must distinguish primary or immediate 
memory, that is, ability to recall a thing immediately 
after it has been learnt, from memory in the more ordin- 
ary sense which involves retention. Immediate memory 
appears to be decidedly weaker in children than in adults, 
and it is well known that children who are otherwise 
intelligent often have difficulty in repeating the exact 
words of messages when asked what they have been told 
to say. - Binet makes use in his intelligence tests of 
the fact that this immediate memory strengthens as 
children grow older, by requiring them to repeat several 
figures, or a short sentence, immediately after hearing 
them said. On the other hand, children retain what they 
have learnt rather better than adults, and the retentive 
powers appear to reach their maximum efficiency at the 
age of thirteen or fourteen. But it is also necessary in 
respect to children, to distinguish special memories for 
certain classes of objects. Thus memory for concrete 
objects, numbers, abstract words, and so on, varies at 
different stages of development, as indeed we should 
expect from the close connection between memory and 
interest. The child learns more slowly than the adult, 
and in addition he learns certain things more slowly at 
certain stages of his growth. There is also some evidence 
to show that good physical development tends to coincide 



122 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

with good immediate and retentive memories. It 
appears, too, that children have not specially good 
rote or mechanical memory as distinct from logical 
memory of subject matter that is clearly understood. 
Apparent improvement in the retentive powers of a 
given individual, apart from that due to natural growth 
or to increased interest in the subject matter, seems to 
resolve itself mainly into improved methods of learning, 
a more reasoned presentation of subject matter, the 
formation of suitable associations, and so on. Most of 
these, in the case of children, depend on the teacher, so 
that it is along such lines that attempts may be legiti- 
mately made to improve the pupils' memories. But the 
old-fashioned belief in the excellence of children's 
memories must in the main be given up. It may have 
arisen partly from their slightly greater native retentive- 
ness, but was probably due in the main to the fact that 
constant more or less mechanical ' learning by heart ' 
was insisted upon in schools to an extent to which nO 
adult would submit, so that no standard of comparison 
for the memories of adults and children was available. 
Indeed, considering the time occupied by such learning 
and by frequent repetition, the amount that the children 
remembered was, in fact, less surprising than the amount 
they yet managed to forget. In reality some part of 
the supposed fixity of things learnt in childhood depends 
on the fact that we have been fortunate enough to learn 
things which we have frequently used. Few people 
forget the alphabet or the multiplication table, but 
many of us forget the hymns we learnt as children, and 



SPECIAL STUDIES : MEMORY 123 

those of us who cease to read history forget the 
* dates ' we used to reel off by heart. These considera- 
tions and the time taken up by memory work should 
make educators cautious in advocating much learning 
by heart in schools. Care should be taken to select only 
such things for learning as are likely to be useful or 
pleasant as a possession throughout life, and in allotting 
the memory work to different periods of the child's time 
at school teachers should take into account all available 
evidence as to the age when special memories for different 
types of subject matter are likely to be most effective. 
The learning of things whose frequent usefulness is 
doubtful may for the most part be left until they are 
actually heeded, or at least may be demanded only from 
children whose memorising or retentive powers, or both, 
are specially good. Thus most historical dates, many 
geographical ' facts,' all but the most useful mathe- 
matical formulas, irregular verbs in foreign languages — 
to mention a few of the things frequently memorised in 
schools, may in general be treated in this way. Some of 
them will be memorised unconsciously as they occur in 
ordinary school work, and the rest may be learnt later 
on if and when they are needed. They will indeed be 
learnt more rapidly and intelligently because they are 
needed for a purpose, and even if they are sooner forgotten 
they will probably be retained long enough, i.e. as long 
as the learner is working at the particular subject in 
question. The learning of poetry by heart can of course 
be justified on the ground that its knowledge is a pleasant 
and valuable possession, akin to the musician's abihty to 



124 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

.play without notes. But it is unlikely to be a pleasant 
possession except to such children, and they are usually 
in the majority, who take genuine pleasure in learning 
poetry. 

Much learning by rojte in school has until lately been 
advocated on the ground that it * trained ' the memory — 
a particularly attractive aspect of the theory of formal 
training. This contention has been made the subject of 
investigation of a number of experiments. The results 
of some of these, or at least the inferences based upon 
them, have been conflicting, but the most recent series^ 
those conducted in London by Sleight, seem to give 
good ground for denying any transference of memory 
power, as such, from one subject to another. In brief, 
practice in memory work in one subject, though of course 
we may expect improvement in this particular subject, 
will not cause improvement in learning other material, 
even when this is somewhat similar to that used for 
practice, unless the learner consciously or unconsciously 
applies better methods of learning to the second task, 
because he has used them during the practice. His 
memory, as such, will not improve, but his intelligence 
in setting to work may. In fact he may acquire' a service- 
able concept of method which he can apply in learning 
different material. To make use of rhythmic intonation 
in learning may be given as one illustration of a simple 
concept of method, another, much neglected by children, 
is to obtain a clear understanding of the subject matter 
to be learnt before attempting to memorise it. This 
view will be welcome to the intelligent teacher, who is 



SPECIAL STUDIES : MEMORY 125 

thus freed from the responsibUity of urging con- 
tinual rote learning upon his pupils, whilst numerous 
possibilities of helping them to acquire rational 
methods of attacking their work will suggest them- 
selves Jo him. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SPECIAL STUDIES IN CONNECTION 
WITH ADOLESCENCE 

The phenomena connected with adolescence have received 
much attention during recent years and their study now 
almost forms a special branch of educational psychology. 
Stanley Hall's work on the subject is probably the best 
known, but in addition to his books there are numerous 
others which treat the subject from various points of 
view and employ various methods of study. Some of 
these are based on answers to questionnaires^ a plan which 
has been more popular in America than in this country, 
and the results of which, while often intensely interesting 
and suggestive, perhaps tend to accentuate the more 
exciting but probably more abnormal phases at the 
expense of those comparatively dull experiences which 
may nevertheless be commoner. Others again are based 
on evidence gathered from special knowledge of adoles- 
cents in schools or in boys' and girls' clubs. The latter 
type of evidence is often particularly interesting, since 
the boys and girls observed are no longer under the 
restraint of school discipline, and their tendencies and 
needs are consequently more freely expressed. The 

i?6 



SPECIAL STUDIES : ADOLESCENCE 127 

absence of restraint also shows up more vividly some of 
the dangers of adolescence, v^hich if not w^holly guarded 
against in school, are at least thrust under the surface. 
Other studies, and these by no means the least valuable, 
take the form of the biographical novel of which Richard 
Feverel may be instanced as the classical type, or of auto- 
biography. 

The practical outcome of these numerous studies is, 
however, somewhat depressing for the teacher. The 
result of his reading may be to leave him on the one hand 
with a perhaps salutary sense of the dangers of the 
adolescent period, and on the other with a sense of his 
own powerlessness to deal effectively with the problem, 
since indeed it often seems that it is the influence of the 
boy's or girl's contemporaries that counts at this stage 
rather than that of his elders. Some suggestions and 
hints, both positive and negative, can, however, be 
gathered, and it is the purpose of this chapter to sum- 
marise these while at the same time giving a brief de- 
scription of the characteristics which are held to mark 
off the adolescent stage from those which precede and 
follow it. 

The age boundaries of adolescence are ill-defined, 
and vary, not only as we should expect, in different 
races and under different climatic conditions, but also 
in different individuals of the same race and living in 
the same country. Roughly speaking, for English 
children we may expect adolescence to begin about the 
age of twelve or thirteen and to end, at least in its most 
marked form^ aboLit nineteen or twenty. But some writers 



128 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

trace the influence of sexual preoccupation back into 
earlier childhood, and some of the characteristics of 
adolescence persist under favourable conditions, as, for 
example, at the Universities, through the first years of 
the twenties. Physiologically, the age is marked by the 
development of the sex organs and of the secondary sex 
characteristics. In both sexes a certain instability in 
physical strength and development is the result. Both 
are specially liable to acquire certain diseases, such as 
tuberculosis^ and both seem to alternate physically 
between periods of unusual energy and well-being, and 
periods of inertia and slackness. This points to a less 
rigid school discipline and to a sympathetic recognition 
of the fact that the same ground may be covered by fits 
and starts as well as by steady application. At the same 
time there is risk of over-pressure, both in school work 
and in games, and for this both teachers and parents 
have to be on the look out. But a mechanical plan of 
urging forward the slack and pulling' back the keen may 
be merely stupid and lead to unnecessary friction in many 
cases. In the main, however, these physical questions 
are matters for the doctor rather than for the teacher or 
parent, who need rather to provide themselves with the 
necessary medical advice in any doubtful cases than to 
form theories of their own on the subject. 

The mental and moral characteristics of adolescence 
are naturally in large measure interdependent with the 
physical, but their treatment is more particularly the 
responsibility of the educator, who therefore needs to 
study them more carefully. 



SPECIAL STUDIES : ADOLESCENCE 129 

I. In the first place, there is the development of the 
sex instinct and its emotional eifects. Civilised peoples 
have to face the fact that this instinct appears long before 
its direct satisfaction hy marriage is either possible under 
existing social conditions, or it would appear even 
physiologically desirable. Luckily the sex instinct appears 
particularly well fitted to act as a driving force in a 
variety of directions. It may find outlets in boy- and girl- 
hood and in early man- and womanhood in poetry, 
painting and all forms of art, in the preparation for a 
career, in a general thirst for knowledge, whether of 
books or through experience, and in the energies of the 
social reformer. In fact the force of the sex-impulse 
seems to overflow into and strengthen most of the other 
instinctive tendencies, and to find some of its most 
valuable expression through them. 

A much disputed problem which arises in connection 
with the sex instinct itself is how and when children 
should be instructed in sex hygiene, the functions of the 
sex organs, and other kindred subjects. The older plan 
of dravvdng a veil over all such matters, hushing up all 
discussion and questions about them and leaving it to 
chance and the child's companions when and what he 
learnt to understand is now generally admitted to be 
unsatisfactory. The system was perhaps effective in 
keeping such knowledge from girls in the upper and 
middle classes when home education was commonly the 
rule. Healthy and well-occupied girls sometimes re- 
mained surprisingly ignorant until after they grew up, a 
few were even left criminally ignorant until they married. 



130 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

But in most cases the result was not ignorance but 
knowledge gathered stealthily as a forbidden thing, and 
often picked up from contemporaries or half-educated 
elders who neither understood the child's needs nor 
cared in what form the information was put. Anything 
connected with sex was thus looked upon as half improper 
and half a joke, and the element of secrecy added zest 
to both these aspects. Few people would care to let 
religious knowledge be picked up by children in this 
haphazard way, and there seems no reason why the 
question of sex, whose importance no one denies, should 
be treated less conscientiously. In fact the objection to 
giving the child all the knowledge he seeks, and indeed 
encouraging him to seek it, is based on the feelings of 
the adult rather than on regard for the welfare of the 
child. The knowledge will not hurt him, but it may 
frequently embarrass his elders to give it, and his subse- 
quent remarks will almost certainly be at times discon- 
certing to those trained under the earlier system of 
mystery. Moreover, few of us, brought up as we have 
been, are able to talk to children as freely and naturally 
as is desirable, and our conscientious efforts to overcome 
embarrassment may make matters worse. Nevertheless 
the effort is worth while. 

The question remains when and how the information 
should be given. The answers to this have been various 
enough. Some writers say that the matter should be 
approached through a study of plants and animals, and 
this certainly works well with many children. It is 
indeed probably the best for those who have to learn 



SPECIAL STUDIES : ADOLESCENCE 131 

these things, if at all, in schools, since the subject is thus 
taken in the ordinary course and the teacher is provided 
with a straightforward method of approaching the topic. 
In many cases, however, the child's interest is aroused in 
the human aspect of the question, as, for instance, by 
the birth of a younger brother or sister, before he takes 
any interest in that side of plant and animal life. In 
such cases the only plan seems to be to give frankly such 
explanations as the child can grasp as soon as his curiosity 
is aroused, and subsequently to encourage occasional 
conversations on the subject and to answer questions 
readily. It is also desirable to follow up the knowledge 
of human functions thus gained by some study of plants 
and animals, so that the child may get some idea of the 
interconnection of things. The task is difficult enough, 
as anyone who has attempted it will readily acknowledge, 
and the child's questions are at times impossible to answer 
in any way that it can really understand. Still the point 
is gained that he learns to ask questions instead of brood- 
ing over his puzzles, and that he gains enough knowledge 
to save him from the shock of an ill-timed discovery later 
on. All this applies to young children from the age of 
five onwards. Later on, at the age of twelve or thirteen, 
some teaching in sex hygiene is probably advisable as a 
direct preparation for adolescence. This is sufficiently 
easy, since the ground has been already prepared, and it 
may even be done by the provision of a suitable book 
for the boy or girl to read. 

2. In the second place we may note the widening 
and intensifying of the instinct of curiosity. This 



132 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

instinct combines with the spirit of adventure and the 
desire to do and experience on the one hand, and with 
the growing intellectual power on the other. The result 
may be an intense interest in books, especially, owing to 
the attraction of the personal element, in biography and 
history. Or it may be an eagerness for scientific work. 
Some boys run away to sea, others devote themselves to 
games. In nearly all cases we find, temporarily at any 
rate, a marked development of independent thought and 
of the critical faculty. Everything must be tested by the 
adolescent's own knowledge and experience. He takes 
nothing on trust, and is often embarrassingly unwilling 
to accept the opinions of his elders. At the same time 
he is equally open to suggestion from those whom he 
loves and admires. Unfortunately, too, where suitable 
outlets for his intellectual and other energies are not 
available, he may end in wild revolt against authority 
and sometimes in crime. 

3. Thirdly, the social instincts are accentuated. The 
adolescent is amazingly and genuinely altruistic in his 
theories and is intermittently unselfish in his practice. 
He now, in fact, begins to form those abstract sentiments 
which were rare or impossible in his earlier years. His 
intolerance is partly due to the width of these sentiments. 
His justice, his truthfulness and his patriotism admit no 
compromise and allow no compassion for the individual 
who fails to live up to the universal standard. He readily 
forms such ideals, or accepts them from his friends, and 
many of us, like the hero in l^ono Bungay, look back 
with half-respectful admiration on our youthful ideals 



SPECIAL STUDIES : ADOLESCENCE 133 

and sentiments and capacity for self-sacrifice. Nor can 
we help regretting, in spite of its uncomfortable results, 
our adolescent scorn of the feeble compromises of later 
life. 

Widening social ideals are often connected with love 
and friendship for elders and contemporaries of either 
sex. The adolescent reads into his hero all the qualities 
that he most admires, and it is sometimes a comfort to 
those who look on that the influence of even a poor sort 
of hero may be much better than his actual character 
justifies. Friendships, which provide opportunities for 
the discussion and exposition of all kinds of theories and 
beliefs, are perhaps one of the most important means 
of education at this stage and are certainly the least 
provided for, indeed they are often discouraged owing 
to fear of possible evil results. But the effect of the dis- 
couragement of reasonable human intercourse is to reduce 
the adolescent to a sort of soHtary confinement in a 
crowd, and to leave full scope for the more sentimental 
admirations which flourish wherever human beings live 
together without proper opportunities for genuine com- 
panionship. Moreover friendship offers a natural outlet 
for ideas which might otherwise become morbid, and is 
likely to prove a corrective to the adolescent's tendency 
to think himself abnormal and peculiar. And again, to 
guard against possible sentimentality and moodiness by 
occupying the boy or girl perpetually, though it may 
serve to deaden idiosyncrasies and may be necessary in 
some abnormally developed cases, is for the most part a 
method of saving trouble to the educator rather than a 



134 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

real solution of the problem. Given a suitable environ- 
ment and suitable help and teaching the adolescent 
will occupy himself eagerly enough. But in addition to 
this he needs time for thought and even for occasional 
brooding or moodiness, as well as time for friendship, if 
he is to attain his fullest development. And the boy or 
girl who passes through adolescence without time for 
these things is so far the poorer and more humdrum for 
the rest of his or her life. As in other human enterprises, 
something must be risked in order to secure the best. 

4. Fourthly, the constructive or creative instinct is 
normally reinforced and widened and should be available 
to supply the boy or girl with some means of self-expres- 
sion. Self-expression is generally recognised as an im- 
portant need in young children. It is no less important 
for the adolescent, but until lately this has been little 
realised and even now but small provision is made for 
it in ordinary school life. Most of the forms of expression 
which have proved valuable in the history of the race will 
prove valuable now. The utilitarian arts, such as car- 
pentry, cookery and needlework, play their part, but in 
addition the adolescent should have had sufficient 
practice and training in drawing, painting, modelling, 
writing poetry and prose, dancing and music to enable 
him to turn to one at least of these to express himself 
and to satisfy his emotional needs. 

In the past instruction in these arts has been too 
mechanical and too much designed to develop technical 
skill to prove effective for any but a few exceptional 
pupils. What is needed is a continuance of the free 



SPECIAL STUDIES : ADOLESCENCE 135 

expressive art of children, supplemented by such help in 
technique as the pupil himself feels the need of. The 
picture or model should always be something that he 
himself wishes to draw or make, and it should be judged, 
if judgment be necessary, not as an imitation of reahty, 
but for its freedom and vigour of form or colouring. In 
music and dancing great advance may be hoped from the 
work of Dalcroze and others in eurhythmic training. 
This may not only lead to widely increased pleasure in 
and appreciation of rhythm in all its forms, but may 
help those who lack time or opportunity for special study 
of music to find a means of expression for latent musical 
ability. 

In all cases these arts should be taught frankly and 
avowedly as a means of giving pleasure to the * artist,' 
and it should be acknowledged that the quality of the 
work is a minor consideration since genuine artistic 
ability will probably always be rare. This change of 
standpoint need involve no greater demand for time in 
schools. Indeed it may result in a decreased demand 
since, if the method be successful in its aim, the children 
will take a sufficient pleasure in their productions to find 
their own time for a great part of the work, and will 
carry it on naturally into their adolescence when it is 
more particularly needed as a means of self-expression. 

5. Finally the adolescent, boy or girl, is proverbially 
* difficult to manage.' It is not so much that he is in- 
subordinate, though that too may be the case, as that he 
subordinates himself blindly to his own chosen leaders 
and ideals, and that these are frequently not the leaders 



136 BEARINGS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 

or ideals approved of by his parents and teachers. It is 
in this connection that we see the danger referred to in 
a previous chapter, of a discouragement of reasonable 
discussion about problems of religion and morality. 
Where the child has not been used to friendly discussion 
the boy and girl will certainly shun it, with the result 
that they must be left to fight their own mental and moral 
battles without aid unless from their contemporaries, 
whose views are probably no less chaotic than their own. 
Much of adolescent discipline should, indeed, be foreseen 
and prepared for throughout childhood. It might then 
generally, as in some rare cases it now does, consist in a 
frank and friendly admittance of the boy's right to his 
own views and, above all, an increased freedom in many 
directions, with its attendant responsibilities. And the 
more the boy has been practised in the right use of free- 
dom in his childhood the less likely is he to abuse it now. 

Moreover, elders must beware of rashly running 
counter to the instinctive impulses which are now so 
strong. Parents, for instance, seem often blissfully 
ignorant of the storm of passionate anger and even 
hatred which they may arouse by foolish criticism of 
their children's friends. Yet disagreement on this point 
is not infrequently the origin of a more or less serious 
and permanent estrangement. 

The temporary instabilities which lead to * adolescent 
crime ' must also be noticed in connection with discipline. 
How frequent these are it is at present difficult to 
determine, but it is clear that, for instance, tendencies 
to kleptomania and various forms of burglary are common 



SPECIAL STUDIES : ADOLESCENCE 137 

enough and passing enough to deserve lenient treatment 
when they are discovered. In some cases the hoy or 
girl * idealises ' the crime and pictures himself as a sort 
of hero of romance. In other cases he is bitterly ashamed 
of the impulse, to which he yet feels forced to yield. 
Still more serious is the tendency to suicidal mania, 
probably far more common than is apparent, and due 
sometimes to excessive self-depreciation and over- 
sensitiveness, and sometimes to a specific disappointment 
or grief. In only exceptional cases probably is it actually 
dangerous, more often it is merely paralysing. But in 
all its forms it seems responsible for a genuinely intense 
misery, from which some boys and girls at any rate might 
be saved by a more sympathetic treatment. 

In conclusion we may insist on what has already been 
implied that the sort of dicta found in some educational 
books, such as " keep the adolescent fully ^occupied," 
" cultivate the normal," " guard against all tendencies 
to morbid development," while they seem to follow the 
dictates of common sense are somewhat lacking in imagina- 
tion and in a full understanding of the problem. Adoles- 
cence is the one brief period of our lives when each one 
of us apparently has the chance of being a little of the 
genius, a little of the artist and a little of the hero. 
Such dicta, if they could be strictly carried out, would 
deprive our children of some of the most glorious and 
most fundamentally profitable moments of their lives. 



OUTLINE 



I. THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 

1. The fundamental importance of instincts .... g 

2. An older view of instincts lo 

3. Characteristic features of instinctive action . . . . n 

a. Instincts are inherited 11 

b. Instincts determine attention 11 

c. Instincts arouse emotion and cause action ... 12 

4. Their special importance for teachers 13 

a. Stimuli in relation to attention 13 

b. Instinctive behavior and personal responsibility . . 14 

c. The control of instinctive action 14 

5. The teacher's attitude toward instinct 16 

a. Instincts as the basis of activity 16 

b. Provision for their legitimate expression .... 16 

c. The need of greater freedom in school life ... 18 

d. Self-direction as effective freedom ig 

6. Useful classifications of instincts 20 

7. Primary importance of play in child life 21 

8. Individual differences in instinctive equipment ... 23 
g. Changes in our conception of discipline . . , . . 23 

10. Government by the teacher 24 

11. Nature and function of punishment 25 

12. The use of self-government 25 

13. The necessity for positive discipline 27 



140 OUTLINE 

II. THE MODIFICATION OF INSTINCTS: 
PURPOSIVE ACTION 

1. Three factors in the instinctive process . . . . . 28 

2. Stimulus and reaction specially subject to change . . 28 
5. The variability of instinctive reactions 29 

4. Instinctive reactions soon become habitual .... 30 

5. Direct and indirect methods of modifying instincts . .32 

6. Controlling the instinct of curiosity 33 

7. Developing the constructive instinct 35 

8. Two points of view in modifying instincts .... 37 

9. The purposiveness of all instinctive action .... 38 
a. Early and later stages 38 

10. Characteristics of purposive action 41 

a. The purpose is the child's own 41 

h. Education is more rapid in the pursuit of one's own 

ends 41 

c. Knowledge thus acquired is readily retained ... 42 

d. The discipline of difficulties is adequate .... 42 

11. The teacher's part in the development of children's 

purposes 42 

a. The proportioned use of individualistic and social 

instincts . 42 

h. The use of varied resources with different children . 44 



III. THE MODIFICATION OF INSTINCTS: 
MENTAL GROWTH 

1. The effect of activity on perception ...... 46 

2. Activity and attention are selective ...... 48 

3. The fallacy of formal training 50 

4. Practical suggestions for the teacher SQ 

a. Provide ample opportunity for the development of 

wide interests So 



OUTLINE 141 

b. See that the child's interests and activities work 
progressively ^i 

c. Direct the child in the face of difficulties .... 53 

d. Keep the permanently useful interests free from 
distraction and over-stimulation 56 

e. Distinguish between immediate and mediate inter- 
ests in work ^y 

/. Provide practice in the choice of occupations for 

leisure time -SO 

5. Some needed changes in classroom technique . . . . 60 



IV. THE GROWTH OF HABITS AND 
SENTIMENTS 

i. The nature of habits Q^ 

a. Habits are formed in close connection with in- 
stincts 64 

b. Habits are also the result of purposive action ... 64 

c. Habits may be deliberately formed by voluntary 
repetition 67 

d. Habits are acquired inadvertently 70 

2. Methods of attacking "bad" habits 71 

3. The nature of the sentiments 72 

4. Relatively permanent attitudes develop slowly in 
connection with activities 73 

a. Effective training connected with understanding 
and desire 74 

b. The growth of sentiments as related to individuals, 
groups, and abstract values 76 

V. ENVIRONMENT AND SUGGESTION 

1. The convenience of distinguishing influence of environ- 

ment from that of teacher 78 

2. The relation of environment to heredity .... * 79 



142 OUTLINE 

3. The educator's need to improve environment ... 80 

a. Some defects of home environments 80 

b. Some defects of school environments 80 

4. Direct teaching and suggestion must supplement 
supervision of environment 85 

5. The nature of suggestion, imitation, and sympathy . . 85 

6. Conditions affecting the conveyance of suggested ideas 87 

7. Suggestibih'ty and contra-suggestibiHty of children . . 87 

8. Obvious dangers in the use of suggestion 89 

9. The encouragement of reason and independent thought 

as a main end 92 

VI. EXPERIMENT IN EDUCATION 

1. The importance of experimental education .... 95 

2. The empirical quahty of educational theory .... 95 

3. The practical attitude of the teacher 96 

4. The characteristic features of scientific experiment in 
education 97 

a. Adequate knowledge of influencing conditions is 
necessary 99 

b. Cases selected for study should be fair samples . . loi 

c. Experiment is only a part of general educational 
science 102 

d. Mathematical and statistical science add to accuracy 108 

VII. SPECIAL STUDIES IN CONNECTION 
WITH MEMORY 

1. The nature of memory . in 

2. JMemory power varies with subject matter . . . .112 

3. Memories vary in type 114 

4. The uses of memory images 116 

5. The functioning of memories . . 121 

6. Rote learning and rational methods in training the 
memory 124 



OUTLINE 143 

VIII. SPECIAL STUDIES IN CONNECTION 
WITH ADOLESCENCE 

1. Typical methods of stud3dng adolescence . . . .120 

2. The difficulties of dealing with the adolescent period . 127 

3. The age boundaries of adolescence 127 

4. Its mental and moral characteristics 128 

a. Sex instinct and its emotional effects . . . . .129 

b. The widening and intensifying of curiosity . . .131 

c. The accentuation of the social instincts . . . .132 

d. The reinforcement of the constructive and creative 
instinct 134 

e. The difficulty of "managing" adolescents . . . 135 



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